Common pond snails completely devastate hair algae!!!

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7Enigma

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
Dec 29, 2005
Messages
2,913
Location
Havertown, PA
Hello all,

I have some very cool news I recently found out with my tanks. For those that don't know I have a heavily planted medium/high light DIY CO2 setup that gets fertilized regularly, with a high bioload of fish as well. I also have a low light no fert snail farm that I use as a QT tank when needed. In this tank there are common pond snails and MTS.

So I've been having trouble keeping some new plant species I received a while ago from GlitcH. Most notably the glosso completely disintegrated over the course of a couple of weeks. I was very disappointed since that was the whole purpose for redoing the tank to give a foreground cover. I don't know if it was the Excel I was supplementing with or what, but it was not to be.

I've recently had some algae as well that is probably from the CO2 bottles not producing as well as they used too with the colder weather. I'll be going pressurized in the next couple weeks (Christmas gift to myself). :)

As for the topic at hand (sorry it took so long), I've developed a good bit of hair algae all over my christmas moss. This has made it look really nasty as the fine lace-like strands are now tangled together and look aweful. Again this is hair algae so not directly caused by a deficiency with the moss, so there was no actual damage to it and no reason to trim and chuck it.

So fearing that I was going to lose it like the glosso I took a small trimming and threw it in the QT tank. Now I've tried using the snails before as a cleaning crew but the staghorn and BBA that I suffered from when originally planning to breed snails don't seem to be tasty to them in the least.

I come back the next day and am utterly shocked when the christmas moss looks like the day I originally put it in. Completely devoid of any trace of algae, not a SPECK! So I think to myself wait a minute. My goal of breeding snails to introduce back into the main tank might be helpful after all. Hair algae seems to be my most basic nuisance algae since my BN does a good job of the small amount of GSA I find around the tank, and I've pretty much eliminated the BBA and staghorn.

Fast forward to 2 days ago. I took the bulk of the moss out of the main tank, and weighed it down in the QT tank. It looks now ~90% free of all algae, and there are probably 20 or so common pond and MTS working their magic on the thin strands. I'm going to give it another day or so, then reintroduce back into the main tank. If this strategy pays off (and I can keep my @#$# barbs from picking at the snails) I might never see hair algae in the main tank again! (probably introduce at night when the fish are less active and then hopefully some can get to work before being picked on.

Before cleaning (in the main tank):

mossbefore122206.jpg


After cleaning (QT snail tank):

mossafter122206.jpg


I know the pictures don't do it justice, but why would I lie to you? :D
 
Update:

There are now about 20-30 snails cruising around on the (to my eyes) completely cleaned strands of moss. I can't decide if I want to keep the snails on the moss and add back to the main tank or try to shake them off. I really want a large population of snails in the QT tank so that I can add in large amounts to the main tank but never have to worry about depleting my supply.

I think I'll wait just one more day since the snails seem to be doing something on the moss (probably laying eggs).
 
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