Damselfly nymph and a LOT of snails.....

[Princess1982]

Hi Everyone

I am afraid to say that I made the mistake of not washing some new plants before adding them to my aquarium and now I have about 60 baby snails (3 different types too!) taking over my tank. I have never seen anything like it! I had first tried picking them out when I saw them but they are fast taking over my tank.

This morning, whilst wondering what to do about the snails, I spotted this ugly little bug that looks like a cross between a scorpion and a shrimp. After a bit of Googling it looks like a damselfly nymph. I have now been routing around in the gravel trying to find it but it seems to be in hiding.

So my question is, is there anything that will eat both snails and this ugly little nymph? I will be keeping the Malaysian trumpet snails and they are beneficial to the aquarium but the rest have to go! And I am concerned about my small fish with the damselfly nymph in the tank. Please help!!!

Thanks

 

[Fishfur]

The larvae of damsel flies don't eat fish as a rule, unless perhaps they were very tiny fry. They're mostly insectivores and also go for small crustaceans.. like daphnia, for example. It will eventually morph if you don't find it and fly away. Dragon fly larvae might take fry or a very small fish, if it's a dragon fly. I've had a few show up the same way, I caught and disposed of them.

I tend not to worry too much about the small snails. I don't overfeed, and with the exception of the larger species of pond snail, most don't bother plants. I pick out any I see, and scrape off any eggs I see and their numbers normally stay pretty low. They actually make pretty decent clean up crew. But if they really bug you, I can only see one or two choices.

Some say snails will go for boiled lettuce, you put a leaf in at night and hopefully it is covered with snails by morning and you remove it, and them. It is not sure cure though.

Too bad there are fish, by that I mean, if there were not, you might reduce the snails numbers more quickly by not feeding anything at all, and hand picking every one you see. Lack of food should slow reproduction a bit too.

But that's not on with fish. So, you might remove some of the MTS you want to keep, to safety. They reproduce very quickly, so if you grab a few of them, you can keep them in a jar for a week if need be.

While it might be nice if you could 'dip' the whole tank to kill snails, first. I'm not sure if the dose that would do in snails would also do in fish. Also not sure if it will work at all, and having a lot of dead snails all at once might be hard on the fish for a short time with ammonia.

Usually, you dip plants before adding them to prevent this. But if the snails bug you enough, you could, if it's not too large, drain the tank as low as possible, remove the plants entirely and then dip them in Hydrogen Peroxide mixed with water, which will kill all eggs and snails on the plants. Peroxide need not be rinsed for itself, but I'd rinse to remove anything that's dead.

Any snails not on plants will be left in the tank, and most of them should be pretty visible. So you could pick most of them out, from the glass or gravel before replacing the water. Any egg masses on glass will also be visible and you can just scrape them off. They're like jelly, so easy to remove from hard objects. Dip or boil wood, rocks or decor to kill eggs.

There are snail killing products, but most of them are copper based and are very hard to get rid of once they're in there. So if you wanted any inverts later on, to be sure the copper was gone you might have to break down the tank and filter to start over,
because carbon won't remove it, and it lasts a long, long time after being added.

Another reason I am not bothered by a few snails.. getting rid of them takes quite a lot of work.

Edit.. one thing I forgot, sorry. You can get either spixi snails or assassin snails and both are very good at preying on other snails. Despite the names, I think Spixis are better at it than assassins are, but neither will eradicate all the others overnight. It takes time.