Where did these snails come from?

[lordrbray]

OK, first, I am an experienced keeper, with over 15 years of freshwater experience with 45 and 55 gallon tanks. I have had snails before as a result of new fish that were brought from the store and not being careful enough to make sure that everything except the fish stayed out of my aquarium.

However, I have not bought fish in over a year, I have no live plants and have not added rocks, plants, fish or ANYTHING to this tank in well over 6 months. Despite that, I walked in this afternoon and found 6 snails on the walls of the aquarium.

I HATE snails and am at an utter loss to explain their sudden appearance. How does this happen?

 

[Autumnsky]

Have any loss of fish lately which could have been snail eaters? Maybe they were laying low?

 

[lordrbray]

No snail eaters and no fish have died for over a year

 

[JackBinimbul]

Certain species of snail's eggs can be dormant for years. It's likely they were in your substrate.

 

[Autumnsky]

What kind of snails are they? (other than now dead ones )

 

[lordrbray]

Not sure. Very small spiral shell light colored, almost white.

 

[evil Nick]

spiral long or a circle? long are trumpet snails, major PITA's get

 

[lordrbray]

Spiral long

 

[Toad]

Sounds like mts. My guess is they've been in there for awhile, but an increase in a food source can bump the population up considerably.

 

[evil Nick]

yeah they hide in the substrate and come out at night. What fish do you have? Ive noticed that even non snail eaters will chomp down on the tiny ones before they grow sometimes keeping the pops down.
when the light goes off tonight wait a couple hours then point a flashlight in there and see if you see them.

hey its a good reason to buy a puffer! I recommend pea or freshwater amazon puffer

 

[Autumnsky]

Just as an fyi, if you see a bunch of snails heading to the top of the tank, especially ones that live in the substrate, you probably have some sort of water parameter issue, kind of like an accessory alert system.

You can bait a real trap - or just diy version, skip a feeding day and then add a delicious bottom feeder wafer and grab up all you can, over and over each week throughout a period of a month let's say.

Malaysian Trumpet Snails are hard to get rid of.

Do some [extra] vacuuming of the substrate a few times to get out any muck from the substrate, reducing the feeding opportunities for them.

 

[Tacit Blues]

They’re good for the system, imho, and especially if they’re MTS where they mostly come out when you can’t see them anyway, I’d just count it as a free bonus cleaning crew.

 

[evil Nick]

They’re good for the system, imho, and especially if they’re MTS where they mostly come out when you can’t see them anyway, I’d just count it as a free bonus cleaning crew.

I used to love them but they can easily get out of control even by monitoring feedings. If you have plants and any algae they will have food. My puffers and loaches (I believe) used to keep the number down in my 55.