I put wild snails into my aquarium!

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

gozirra

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Mar 12, 2010
Messages
1
I've done a stupid thing. I found some wild snails at the beach and brought them home and put them (and some water and sand) into my quarantine tank that has been empty for a while. It was an attempt to cycle the tank, since it's been empty for about 4 months.

I figured that it was OK, since it didn't go into my 50 Gallon tank, but then in a lapse of judgement, I put one of these snails into my main tank. Three days later, I noticed that my clown looked like he developed ICH and had some bloody scales. I suspect that I've contaminated my tank with wild bacteria. Doh!

Can anyone give advice as how I should proceed? Do I need to clean everything out and start from scratch? Should I medicate the entire tank with antibiotics? What are the chances that these events are unrelated?

One more detail. One of my damsels has fled to the top of the tank, and has been hanging out up there since before I introduced the snail. I thought he didn't look so good, and he seemed to be pale and had a few scales missing. He's still up there, and hanging in there. Could he be the culprit who ave a bacterial infection to the clown?

Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Gozirra
 
Snails don't carry ich! More then likely your Damsels and a clown is a Damsel got into a fight and in the stress of it all your clown came down with ich.
 
Welcome to AA!

What kind of snails are they? Where is the beach? US? East coast, west coast?

Snails aren't carries of the parasite ich. You noticed 1 fish had a problem before you introduced the snail. I would say the snail had nothing to do with anything. Missing scales sounds more like a bacterial problem than a parasite problem.

How's your water quality? Can you post some parameters?
SG, temp, nitrate, pH?
How long have you had the fish and how long has the tank been running?
How often do you do water changes?

You never want to treat the fish while in main display tank. Always take the fish out and treat them seperately in a qt setup.
 
Unless you gathered material several miles offshore I would be worried about pollutants and who knows what contamination.

I'm assuminjg everthing came from the Tampa Bay area. How long has the main tank been set up?
Please describe the original setup and when everything was added (a timeline).

For now you should set up the QT and move the clown that tank. Do 2x/daily water changes till you can get a proper biofilter set up.
Please post some photos of the fish to help identify what's ailing it.
 
hey now, just because you come from NJ and can walk on the water there, do not slag Florida's beaches. We eat the Oysters here.
 
Back
Top Bottom