Baby snails

[aquababy]

Hi everyone
When I was cleaning out my aquarium earlier I noticed two very very small snails (or what I think are snails anyway) in the bottom of my filter and another on the bottom of the aquarium. But I never noticed anything before. There was nothing floating or any other signs. I have got an apple snail and another one with a kind of leopard skin shell (I don't know what it is called).
Can anyone tell me why I never noticed anything before and what I should do with them? If they're ok I don't particularly want to get rid of them. Help please. I've not had my aquarium for long and this is the first "problem" I have had.

Karen

 

[bunebop]

I do not know very much about snails... but I do know my boyfriend tank got one snail in it when he bought a plant from the store and the snails very very very quickly multiplied... to the point where they had to take them out daily and scrape them off etc because they were everywhere. I would just let them be until they become a nuisance... and at that point as opposed to adding chemicals to it I would get a fish which would eat them (a clown loach for example) good luck!

 

[Eoin]

I’m not surprised you didn’t notice them before. When I bought the plants for my tank, a number of snails hitched a ride into my tank. I started looking closer and noticed there were a number of snails smaller than the head of a pin. They were transparent and only visible against glass with back-lighting. If you weren’t looking for them, you wouldn’t notice them.

My one recommendation would be to keep an eye out for eggs. The snails in my tank have already laid eggs, and I am into the second generation of snails. This happened in just over a month. Now I have a whole army of little snails slinking about. All I can do is wait for them eat themselves into a point of equilibrium within the tank. There is no way I can get them all out. There are too many, and they are everywhere. So are their eggs. They are like the orcs of the home aquarium.

 

[flipz]

I've never understood why the people who want them (like me) can't get them to reproduce. But the people who don't want them make more babies in a day than a sperm bank makes in a year. 8O

-brent

 

[julicat]

Regardless of our likes/dislikes of these stowaways, does anyone know if they are objectively good, bad, or indifferent to the tank environment? I would imagine they add to the good, natural biological goings on in one's tank.

BTW does the term cycling refer to?

 

[Devilishturtles]

Snails can be good, there is definitley not much bad about them unless they multiply like woah..and completley fill your tank The snails will eat algae and some bottom gunk from your gravel. Overall, they are pretty cool to have I think. They WILL eat live plants though if they are hungry, so watch out for that. Other than that, don't worry about it...when the time comes, if the time comes, that they are running you out, come back and post or read another topic, and we can offer many ways to get rid of the pesky little things.

Cycling a tank refers to completling the nitrogen cycle of your tank basically...setting up the correct amounts of nitrates, nitrites, ammonia(none), etc. Do a search for cycling, and you will come up with many results, there have been quite a few topics on cycling.

 

[aquababy]

Thanks everyone.
I don't think they came with the plants as I bought them about 5 months ago and surely they would have grown bigger than that by now?!

I'll just have to wait and see what happens next. I'll probably come searching for help in a few weeks again.

 

[hashbaz]

I had some snail hitchhikers once. I let some of them grow but they never got very big. I bet this is normal for some varieties.

Later I decided I didn't want snails eating my plants. So I put in some had-a-snail. I must say it worked like a charm. My plants died very quickly, and the snails continued to multiply like rabbits.

 

[aquababy]

You killed the plants and kept the snails?? I would have done it the other way around!

 

[flipz]

I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic about it working like a charm. lol

-brent

 

[smilla4]

The little snails are probably "pest" snails. They reproduce very quickly, even from a single snail. You will end up with a lot of them. Even if you take them out of the tank now they will probably continue to manifest.

I treated my plants with lime-it before adding them to my tank, so none ended up in there. As an experiment I actually kept some untreated plants in a bucket of dechlorinated water for a couple of weeks to see if anything would show up. And I got quite a lot of snails. I've seen various sorts of creatures show up in there. It's be pretty interesting to observe.

However I don't have any snails in my tank.

If you don't want an infestation I would suggest you take any non-apple snails out of your tank. If you want to see what happens, keep them in a separate container. That way you can easily get rid of them if you find you don't want them after all. You might be able to find a hobbyist who has snail eating fish you can donate them to... Just don't release them outside or flush them, otherwise they'll be an environmental problem.

 

[krap101]

ill take em but shipping will be too much if instead i can just go to like walmart (dont usually go there but when my parents go theres a chance) and buy a plant and have em scrape off some snails. since they have millions of them

maybe their apple snails?

 

[Daddyo]

Get yourself a dwarf puffer! They clean out snails faster than they can breed. I have one in my 10gal tank that I purposely stock with snails just to feed. He'll actually wait for the snail's eggs to mature to the point that you can just make out a shell, then he'll go around and do cleanup.

The worst part is, I want the snails to clean up some algae in that tank but the puffer won't let them live that long.

 

[flipz]

hah daddyo. my GSP doesn't even give them enough time to breed. and for some reason ive never been succesful breeding them outside of the tank. everyone says just put it in a bucket. i tried, gave it sun light, gave them food (lettuce), everything. they never seem to reproduce.

-brent

 

[aquababy]

do the dwarf puffers just eat the baby ones or the big ones as well? I don't want to have to get rid of my original two just because I've got a snail eater!

 

[flipz]

I don't know about the dwarf, but from what I've read GSP's are only supposed to be able to eat snails about the size of the eye. Mine eats snails bigger than he his. haha. So probably not a good idea. I don't know if it's possible to keep snails and have a snail eating fish.

I of course am only speaking from my GSP though.

-brent

 

[Daddyo]

My dwarf puffer eats every snail he can. I put a big golden snail in there, easily 4 times his size and he still tried to eat it. He's eaten 4 mystery snails about the size of a dime each and all the eggs they laid.