Up to my ears in snails!

[Gillie]

Not too long ago I started planting my 55 gal and soon after a terrible algae problem arose. I figured I would add a few more Ottos to the crew hoping to help resolve the problem. Finally one of my LFS had MTS for sale, I then thought to myself those would be great additions to my clean up crew and I bought some. For the longest time I never saw them day or night. Now my algae problem is cleared up and still haven't seen much for snails until the other night. There were hundreds of the little buggers on the glass when I got up for one of those late night snacks. I guess my only option is to trap the excess snails and get rid of them. I should have known to read more about them and their reproduction rates before hand.

 

[Lepomis]

I don't know of any negative effects of MTS. They will regulate and drop in numbers as they clean up the substrate.

 

[theotheragentm]

They end up in large numbers, but you can pull them out of the tank pretty easily. Then you can offer them up to other people.

 

[hashbaz]

I really like MTS. I have 100s of algae eating snails that clean the tank at night and keep themselves hidden during the day.

 

[Jason the Lost]

I wish I could have snails...unfortunatley my loaches attack them no matter their size like the raptors on trex in Jurrassic Park 1

 

[DarylF2]

Jason, have you tried MTS? My loaches won't touch MTS, although the LOVE regular pond snails. My loaches are a smaller variety (Kubotai loaches, also called Burmese Border loaches), so maybe that's why mine leave MTS alone...

 

[smn723]

MTS breed like rabbits. theotheragentm's suggestion is a good one. Lots of people would like to have some of those snails and it helps keep them in check in your tank.

 

[Jason the Lost]

Not sure what kind I've had other than the "mystery" snails I've got at the LFS a couple times. I had quite an explosion of whatever little type of snails usually come attached to plants and bought the clown loach thinking it would clean up....boy did it. Now no snail is off limits it seems.

 

[rkilling1]

FWIW, MTS's don't just multiply quickly unless there is plenty of food available.

I love the MTS. I know when I have been overfeeding by the population of snails in the tank. When I notice hundreds of them, I just stop feeding as much.

What would you rather have, a ton of organic matter decomposing in your tank or a ton of MTS's eating it up? I prefer the snails.

 

[Gillie]

Oh yeah, they had plenty to eat. It's all but gone now. So as soon as I clean most of them out I will have quite a few to get rid of. I really don't mind them it's just that they are now everywhere at all hours.

 

[DepotFish]

rkilling1 is right, MTS really don't multiply that quickly with low food. I don't know why they get such a bad reputation. I love snails and I'd like to see my MTS more often. I have about 50 around 1 cm and maybe 100 visible tinies in a 30g. I made the mistake of letting my sunfish have a day's worth of swimming in the tank when it got overpopulated with MTS, and they ate too many of the snails. Now I want them back.

 

[cabezon]

I never got MTS I got the little pond snails. they were fun to watch, but the yoyo got all of them. Now I keep a 1gal snail tank to bring treats to the yoyo, it's an amazing ecosystem in there. When I got down to 5 or so, I purposefully overfed the tank, and now I have a hundred little dots swimming and floating, the eggs were every where.

now if they got big, that might be fun, but they never get more than 8 or 9 mm.

 

[fishb0ne]

As opposed to most people, I'm trying to get MORE MTS so that I can acclimate some of them to brackish and have them help keep the substrate fluffy and clear the algae issues in my crab colony.

 

[Sicklid]

I never see the ones in my tank until the food source is plentiful, as well. I thought the MTS were practically extinct in my 2.5gal that has not had any visible algae for months until last week when I let my nitrates drop and I got an algae bloom. Now I am seeing them all over the place!