My First Planted tank - 45g Journal

[PaulieFish]

I was wondering what I could do to control my pond snails. I keep seeing little holes in my plants. The thing is I also have MTS, which I know are not eating my plants. I also have a mystery snail..

Anyone have any ideas? Could my mystery snail be making the little snails.. I thought they had to make eggs for that, which I do not see. I have seen the egg nests in other pictures of people but there is def none of that in my tank. Once my clown loach died.. they started to come back..

Anyone have any ideas on how to get rid of them.

 

[WhiteDevil]

Not without harming the other snails I dont.

maybe remove the mts and mystery to a seperate tank or even bucket and kill off the pond snails. I hate them things, they dont even hold together like real snails do when you squish em.

clown loach and puffers will eat the mts too, basically you gotta harvest the ones you want to keep and kill the others, maybe someone has a better idea but thats all I can think of.

 

[PaulieFish]

Ill wait, I do however have a 10g tank I could transfer the other fish too. I hear goldfish eat pond snails. Maybe I could get a cheap goldfish for the time being. Umm.. Its going to be impossible to get all my MTS out of the sand lol. I wonder if i do the lettuce trick, if the MTS will go as well.

 

[WhiteDevil]

vacation feeder blocks work best for me when I am trapping them, I used this and a baby food jar sterilized to get my starters.

to get snails out of the sand....use a fish net, coarse or larger holes but fish net holes not like huge, the sand filters thru and out come the snails. this does entail a tear down though and fish need to be transferred to a holding tank or bucket.

 

[PaulieFish]

vacation feeder blocks work best for me when I am trapping them, I used this and a baby food jar sterilized to get my starters.

to get snails out of the sand....use a fish net, coarse or larger holes but fish net holes not like huge, the sand filters thru and out come the snails. this does entail a tear down though and fish need to be transferred to a holding tank or bucket.

Ugg I cant do an entire tear down again lol

 

[WhiteDevil]

basially remove the decor and plants and fish, shut the filter off, sift the sand, let it settle turn filter on, re-add the decor and plants then fish.

I jsut did this to my 40 tall guppy tank, went from 50# of sand to 120# of eco complete between noon and 3pm( got kids in preschool so in 3 hours I get er dun)

 

[PaulieFish]

I guess since I am on spring break, maybe i can do that tomorrow. I dont know if my 10g tank is big enough for all my fish tho. I ahve a good amount of fish and I think my gourmai might attack without big enough space.

 

[Aquarium1]

Gouramis gone wild: spring break edition lol. Sorry had to do it haha. Good luck with whichever route you plan to take.

 

[PaulieFish]

Im thinking of breaking the whole thing down, only thing is.. if i break everything down and take everything out.. wont it just end up on my 10g tank.. I think I should just get a cold fish, and hope it wont kill all my MTS.. I hear they are great at taking care of pond snails. I also figure it wont change my water parameters to bad if he isnt in there too long.

 

[Aquarium1]

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f20/diy-pond-snail-trap-126550.html you could give that a shot first. If the mts got in it too u could just put them back.

 

[PaulieFish]

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f20/diy-pond-snail-trap-126550.html you could give that a shot first. If the mts got in it too u could just put them back.

I was actually thinking that , I could always just pull them out.

 

[WhiteDevil]

Sweet. Wonder if assassins will get stuck in it though

 

[PaulieFish]

Well I do not have any assassins though, I think I might just break down the whole tank today.. because I kind of wanted to start up my 10g tank, which was suppose to be a QT tank, but I might actually make it a MTS farming tank! And maybe put a goldie in there for the waste. But can MTS live without a heater, I dont have one right now for my QT tank. Which is really just an empty 10g tank with a filter.

 

[WhiteDevil]

Mine are fine without a heater, 69.2 degrees ambiant and their tank reads at 71 with the lights on 66 with em off. I got some in a plastic tub with sand and water in it just multiplying away. a few veggie scraps a week and they are happy.

Where do you live paulie?
I am outside of chicago but my tank is in an insulated carpeted heated room.

 

[PaulieFish]

Mine are fine without a heater, 69.2 degrees ambiant and their tank reads at 71 with the lights on 66 with em off. I got some in a plastic tub with sand and water in it just multiplying away. a few veggie scraps a week and they are happy.

Where do you live paulie?
I am outside of chicago but my tank is in an insulated carpeted heated room.

I like in PA, but my house runs I dunno. House is usually around 67ish. I dont know how cold my room is.

 

[WhiteDevil]

Mine is the first run off the supply for the hvac system so it gets HOT, I sleep with the window open and fan on every day of the year.

where in PA?

 

[PaulieFish]

Near Philly

 

[AdamHorton]

If you don't want to tear down the tank, you can just try reaching your hand in and picking out all of the snails you see by hand. I did this every night for a couple of weeks and it worked pretty well. Also destroy any egg sacs you see. When I did this I had a very happy GSP

 

[PaulieFish]

Im mid tear down, but the thing is I see no snails, or snail eggs.. Checked the plants nothing. The only two I found were on the glass which i crushed and let the fish eat.. Other wise I see nothing. But I bet you tomorrow I see 4-5 of them on my plants.

Im mid tear down guys, and if you have any advice where to put these let me know.. the only preference i have is for some reason I want the one plant in there where it already is. I forget the name.

Overview of everything:

Some close ups:

And the cloudy tank (was redoing the sand)

 

[PaulieFish]

New and improved tank shot, inc.. pic heavy!!

Tetra:

More:

New Tank just added sand didnt settle down yet, caught some MTS.. Hoping they breed like crazy, but then again I do not know what I am going to do with them when they do. Aquabid maybe.. I also hope they are ok without a heater for now.

Another view:

Other side:

Swordy:

And my favorite fish: