Snails!!!!!

[arrynyo]

for some odd reason i seem to be finding more and more snails in my tank as of late. 2 of them made it home when i bought a live plant a few months ago, and i know that these are some kind of snails that dont need to mate to have offspring because when i moved them to a glass jar (yes i know i am a monster) they dropped a few eggs. i put them back into the tank (big mistake i found out) and now im finding lil ones popping up like crazy! i think the smaller ones were hidden in there because i got rid of all the ones in the jar and the two that originally snuck in are HUGE compared to where they were. i was feeding them to my two goldfish i have in a bowl, but they have seem to lost their appetite for escargo apparently. if anybody has any tips for ridding my tank of these prolific babymakers, i would love to hear it. im open to all suggestions. and someone told me that snails couldnt survive in a brackish tank, but they should come see how many i have. i know if i pick them off and flush them it wont do too much to get rid of them as they are really good ninjas at hiding, but if there is any fish i can put in my tank that would love to snack on them i would love to find out which ones....thanks guys

 

[mfdrookie516]

puffers will eat snails, and most puffers are brackish. maybe i misunderstood, but do you have a goldfish in this tank? look in the diy forum, aquarium1 made a diy snail trap that seems to work pretty well

 

[DragonFish71]

Whoever told you snails won't survive in a BW tank was crazy, our BW tank has tons of snails.

mfdrookie is right, puffers eat snails, but puffers can also be nasty lil buggers to other fish. Now that being said, what type of fish do you have in there and how big is your BW tank?

 

[arrynyo]

My BW tank is about 20 gallons and I have 2 platies (1 male 1 female) 3 male mollies and 3 female mollies, 2 glass catfish, and 3 female guppy and 2 males, and a single ghost shrimp. I figured the snails would be fine in the tank considering how many there are, and the goldfish are in a bowl by themselves. i originally had just the goldfish in the tank, but i removed them for the molly and platy. somebody suggested lettuce and i put it in the tank last night and the snails pretty much ignored it. like i said i wouldnt mind 1 or 2 of them but i dont want them to get out of hand.

 

[DragonFish71]

With your stocking and tank size, I wouldn't suggest going with a puffer. However, adding more ghost shrimp would help. We keep ghost shrimp in our BW and they help keep the snail population in check. Since the shrimp are sold as FW, you will need to take the time to acclimate them properly to the BW conditions. When adding fish to our's we take about 2 hours using a slow drip. We haven't lost anyone yet. Anyways, the shrimp will eat the snails. They stand on the snail and pull out chunks of snail meat. Since they have the long "arms", they can reach deep into the shell. If you don't want more shrimp, try using a small piece of zucchini instead of the lettuce. Once a week I feed zucchini to our BW tank and our RCS tank, both have snails and the snails gather on the zucchini.

 

[arrynyo]

great i like the shrimp idea at my LFS i can get like 12 of em for $1.99 (thats a sweet deal if you ask me) and i like the shrimp they add something to the tank. ill try the shrimp and i do have a bootleg breeder trap i made that i can use as a trap for the snails, i just have to go buy some vegetables and see which ones the snails like. i was thinking about putting the goldfish back in there for a hour or so he used to munch on the snails like popcorn when he was first in there but i dont want it throwing my tank out of whack thos goldfish are nasty....

 

[DragonFish71]

Not to mention goldfish aren't BW fish. Good price on the shrimp. They go for about 30 cents a piece out here *Rolls my eyes* but I love having them. They can be fun to watch.

 

[arrynyo]

oh yeah i love the shrimp i buy them all the time. sometimes they dont make it. the last time they all jumped out of the water and died.........so i got the sole survivor for now. at walmart out here they cost about $0.25 a piece but i found a better deal at a LFS but they wanted like $6 for one yellow sailfin molly (WTF) i only paid $1.96 for mine at walmart so its give or take on that

 

[Phazeshyft]

Snail stowaway

I just found this dude in my tank.

Is he something to worry about? are all snails bad or prolific baby makers?

He is only 3 mm long right now.

 

[arrynyo]

it all depends on how you feel about them. ive seen some friends tanks get overran with them and ive read some of the horror stories on here. depending on what kind they are, some might need a opposite sex to make babies and some pop them out like a pez despenser! it looks to me like it might be a mystery snail or apple snail, but see if you can check for a trapdoor. if you can bother it and get it to curl in its shell, see if it has a little door to close himself up. if he has one then youre good, they are not baby making machines, and he will help clean algae off the side of your tank, if he doesent,then prepare for literally hundreds of them in the coming months. what kind of fish do you have in your tank?

 

[Phazeshyft]

just goldfish and dalmatian mollies. Saw a goldfish take a peck at the snail and decide he wasn't worth it. He is so small in this 55 gallon tank that I can't find him again, next time I see him I'll check for the trap door.

Thanks for the info.

 

[Phazeshyft]

Well, I was able to get the guy out. Also found another one, smaller. cant figure out the trap door thing. but i got them in a small vase and hopefully there aren't any more in the tank. I will keep checking.

 

[arrynyo]

oh well i can already tell you if you found more than one its the baby pooper kind....yeah if you keep finding em just flush em because you have a endless supply of em now. the only surefire way to get rid of them is to completely empty your tank and dry everything out because from what ive experienced, the babies are very very tiny and they will chill out in your gravel until their shell hardens then they venture out. but if you see microscopic black dots anywhere, thats them. and if they are eating good, they will get big fast. or you can try some of the stuff that was suggested to me on here. but good luck either way

 

[Phazeshyft]

Yeah, I was worried you would say that. I don't see any small ones but if they are hiding in the gravel I will see them eventually. I dropped some lettuce in last night but didn't find anything on it this morning. Some people like them in small amounts. On a different note I found a dead molly this morning. he was acting lethargic yesterday.

 

[arrynyo]

yeah i had a guppy that just died he was kinda just wandering around the tank like he was sad then i found his body this morning. sorry for the loss i know in some places them fish can be expensive. but as far as the snails go just go by how you personally feel about them, i dont mind 2 or 3 but 200-300 is not cool for me. somebody suggested ghost shrimp, they eat the snails i already got 1 in there ill just have to go buy some more later on. but hopefully youll find more baby molly than snails.