A Snail?

[RabidChild]

So I bought a used 90 gallon tank about two weeks ago. It came with some gravel, a few pieces of driftwood and some rocks. I finally got my filters working so I filled the tank tonight. I go over about an hour later and I see some sort of little snail up close to the top of the tank. It's about 1/2" long sort of grey with some brownish streaks.

How the heck did this thing survive? I washed the gravel pretty well and rinsed all the rocks and wood and then scrubbed them a little to get the alge that was clinging on the outside off. I'm assuming that the snail wouldn't need water to live? The gravel was moist but it sat out for a good week in a bucket with no water added at all.

Should I just leave the thing alone and consider it the first resident of my new tank or will it cause problems for me?

 

[Felf]

the gravel was moist and that's enough for a snail. i'd say get rid of any you see now because you can always get them later if you want unless you're already planning on getting fish that eat snails then it wont matter

 

[Jchillin]

Agree with Felf. Depending on what type of tank you are planning, the snail can be a :

1. Welcome addition
2. Feeder for botias (loaches)
3. Complete nuisance

It sounds like you have a ramshorn. These are asexual and reproduce on their own. Where's there is one ramshorn, there will be more.

 

[dr_girlfriend]

Unless you want snails, get rid of it. One will become 1000 eventually. Actually your description sounds like a common pond snail.
Go to http://www.applesnail.net/ and check under "Various" and there are descriptions of the different types of snails.
Snails can survive almost anything it seems.....sigh

 

[Steven A]

Unless you squash them lol

 

[RabidChild]

I went to a couple of sites and the only one that it really looks like is a Malaysian Trumpet Snail, at least it has that same sort of longer cone shaped shell.

I do plan on getting either Clown or Yo-Yo loaches so maybe I'll just leave him alone and let him be loach food in the future.

OK, after writing that and then looking at a couple descriptions I think I need to squash the thing. They sound pretty nasty and I'm not doing a planted tank so they aren't really needed. Of course it has dissapeared now so I have to wait for him to come back out.

Here 's the pic I found that looks almost exactly like the one I have, thanks for your help guys: