Mysterious baby snails

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Yaxley

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
72
Location
Brighton UK
Hello all,
I haven't had snails in my tank since about a year ago but I've just noticed 3 or 4 babies, do i have a secret snail problem?

Yax
 

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Hello all,
I haven't had snails in my tank since about a year ago but I've just noticed 3 or 4 babies, do i have a secret snail problem?

Yax

Have you introduced any live plants to your tank lately? Sometimes snails hitchhike on plants.

:)
 
Interesting, fairly recently yes! Lots of plants in there, they will help clean anyway right?
 
So Are snails good or bad for a planted tank? I have a few of the little brown ones. (don't know the name). Is it because they eat the plants?

Kagochi
 
Sounds like pond snails. I tried putting a couple in my shrimp tank. I started noticing the darn things all over. The gravel seemed like it was moving, there were so many. I had enough and decided the tank needed to be cleared of these pests. I must have flushed over 500 baby snails and tossed a dozen larger ones out to the birds. I found 4 places where there were eggs attached to the walls of the tank. I even found the things in my filter and my power head. Yesterday, I found 2 more in the tank. I just hope thats the last of them because they seemed to be eating my plants and not eating the algae like they should.
 
Pond snails... the small brown ones are not bad for a tank, but in big numbers they are evidence of a bigger problem of overfeeding... I learned the same way, had one or two.. no big deal, but when the population exploded, I started asking around and found out about overfeeding. I did a nice gravel cleaning and feed less and the population has not grown at all since then, I pull a few out every now and then but the population is dying out because the food source is gone...
 
Oh dear, lots of activity! You lot have got me pretty worried about these snails! I'll keep my eye out and get the gravel vac out! Where did they come from, new plants?

Yax
 
Yeah, almost always hitch hikers from the seller... Like people have said, not a problem unless you get overrun, but that can be fixed as well... For me it was a good indicator, I'm glad they are there now, just a little annoying sometimes when taking pics... But at least I know I am feeding the correct amount and cleaning often enough...
 
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