To totally eradicate snails in a cycling and fishless new tank ...

[trennamw]

Could I wait till the cycle is about done, bring the salt way up, wait till the snails are dead, change all the water out, then get fish? Or would it destroy the bio filter ?

Some of my gifted tank supplies had baby snails. I figured the fishless cycle would be so toxic, and the tank so devoid of food, they would die. But the cycle is going faster than I expected and they're still in there. They had 4ppm ammonia at first, that was gone by Wednesday, and keeps disappearing fast. Nitrites are still high and I'm purposely not doing water changes hoping nitRates will be snail toxic.

Other ideas?

I am confident I can do the math such that the salt quantity is extremely low by the time I change water. Lower than the recommended salt dose for freshwater.

 

[jlk]

Pond snails? They can tolerate quite a bit. They do not appear to be adversely affected by higher salinities (.3-.5%) but your nitrifying bacteria will definitely be adversely affected. You may want to consider other options such as manually removing them or assassin snails.

 

[threnjen]

Buy a 2-liter of plain carbonated water. Turn off the filter. dump the whole thing in the tank. Wait a few minutes. The CO2 will gas them to death.

Do a reasonably big water change like 75% (you probably don't need to dose ammonia unless you do a 100% WC) and resume

P.S. Sorry

 

[trennamw]

Buy a 2-liter of plain carbonated water. Turn off the filter. dump the whole thing in the tank. Wait a few minutes. The CO2 will gas them to death.

Do a reasonably big water change like 75% (you probably don't need to dose ammonia unless you do a 100% WC) and resume

P.S. Sorry

Lol no apologies necessary. You totally rescued my fishless cycle, and warned me, and I knew there'd be ways to deal with them.

That's super easy!! I have a soda stream I can make up a bottle right now.

 

[MonkeyMonk86]

Wish I had posted for help like u did.

I stripped the tank. Boiled the sand and the rocks. Vinegar washed the tank. Peroxide dipped, 3 minute Clorox dipped ( 20:1, water:bleach) and then 10 minute potassium permanganate dipped the plants which I'm still quarantining. Then, restarted cycle with Dr. Tim's bacteria, which took longer than when I did it with plants in the water. Poor fish were in a container for about 5 days with constant water changes.

I didn't know I could get rid of them with carbonated water. I got a soda stream, too.

Does it kill the eggs too. I read only after 28 days are you safe. Some snail eggs take 28 days to hatch.

Do you have shellfish/ mollusk allergy, too?

 

[trennamw]

No allergies, just emphatic warning from Threnjen to show no mercy when she very very kindly gave me a lot of stuff to make my cycle take off.

I love snails, and don't mind the look of the eggs, but it seems sensible to control the population now rather than after I decide I don't want this many. I'll do the co2, then a water change, then if any survive I'll let the loaches go at them. And if someone grows up and reproduces, ah well.

They do run for the top of the tank each time I add ammonia, so I've gotten quite a few.

 

[trennamw]

Actually, having read your thread on snails, I may leave it alone. In the stocking scheme that's been my most consistent favorite thAt loach has been my favorite fish. All my other fish are inexpensive ... I may leave the snails alone.

Hmm. But the snails may be too big by then?

I'll talk with the wet spot more today about how quickly I'll likely stock my tank. I don't want to get expensive fish till I know I'm keeping really good consistent water quality.

Then again, the 3 gal betta tank has been extremely consistent for 4-5 weeks now, after it was having daily pH swings, and small tanks are harder, maybe I'm worrying over nothing.

If I did let the snails go for a month would they be too big to get eaten?

 

[trennamw]

Decided to just leave them, in fact now it strikes me as a convenient food source for the loaches. LFS said the snails will get too big to eat but then I can remove them or smash them and the loaches will eat them.

Now we shall see how many survive the fishless cycle.

 

[trennamw]

For anyone's info ...

They survived the fishless cycle but had gotten too big for the loaches, so I tried the carbonated water thing. Mixed 2 bottles super bubbly from the soda stream, dumped them in with the filter off, waited. They all started crawling to the top and I waited about half an hour and wiped off what I could, then figured I'd just try the lettuce thing (get the big ones, leave babies for the loaches).

Then I did a full water change and added fish, just cuz I was done cycling. A week later I haven't seen any snails. I did right when I did the water change (it's interesting how they get stirred up out of the sand then rebury themselves) ... So. I don't know if they're gone or not.