Esha Gastropex - Aquatic Snail Treatment

[Schmill]

I bought this, on the box it says:

Aquatic Snail Treatment
Simple, Safe, SOLUTION

I've already put it into my 60L tank, and was going to put my 'donor' filter media from that tank through it before putting the media into my new filter (which I DO NOT want full of snails!)

However upon further reading of the leaflet that is nicely sealed in the box so you can't 'read before you buy':

In one section;

Does Gastropex have any other uses?
As well as combatting all aquatic snails, GASTROPEX also:
- Combats infusoria blooms.
- Clears cloudy water caused by bacterial blooms (common in new aquarium setups). Bacterial blooms can be dangerous to fish (high levels of organic pollution).
- Combats Hydra. Freshwater Hydra anchor to any submerged surface in your aquarium and can rapidly regenerate to epidemic proportions

In another section;

What Precautions Must I Take When Using GASTROPEX?

FILTERING?
You may continue to filter over non-adsorbing materials such as filter wool, sand, gravel etc. Always remove chemical 'active' media such as activated carbon, UV, oxidisers, resins etc. as the se can have a neagative influence on the action of GASTROPEX. Keep filters running day and night. After using GASTROPEX is it advisable to install a newly grafted filter in your aquarium.

Soooo now I am worried about 2 points;

The first being in the first section, regarding the point about clearing cloudy water caused by bacterial blooms.
Is this almost exactly what we are trying to acheive when tank cycling? Is this stuff going to remove this bacteria? (If so what are they talking about 'organic pollution' from bacterial blooms?
Then the second section; What exactly is a newly grafted filter? If I'm correct in thinking this along the lines of 'skin graft', is this their way of saying that using the treatment will wipe out your filter bacteria, and therefore you need to 're-initialise' after using the treatment?

I'm going to try contacting the manufacturer, but I am interested to hear what other people think?
If I'm correct and this DOES destroy the bacteria in a filter how can it be described on the box as 'SAFE' ???

 

[Corleone]

There are a lot of products that say safe that simply aren't. Another good example I've started seeing recently is antibacterial nanosilver products - while they are effective antimicrobials, they're also indiscriminate killers and will wipe out virtually all single celled (and some multicellular) organisms, including the ones you don't want to kill.

If it kills bacteria, which it sounds like it implies (I'm also assuming the filter graft means mature media transfer), it's something to worry about, but not all antibacterial products will severely impact your biofilter. They may only reduce it, rather than wipe it out. Monitor the tank and see what happens following the treatment. If it seems that the media transfer failed, you can try again and use a parasite med containing copper instead next time, as they typically kill snails.

 

[Schmill]

As an update to this, I was watching my albino corys in the 60L tank this evening, and they seemed to be panting away at the bottom of the tank.
Whiped out my API Test Kit, and ran an ammonia test and a NitrIte test.

Ammonia: Between 0.25 and 0.5 ppm
NitrIte: 0

I am SO annoyed!

Just performed a 50% water change and then retested after an hour, and seem to have brought the ammonia level back down to 0, (or very very close), and plunged the tank temperature from 27 deg. C, down to around 20 deg C
SO very annoyed though, I am putting the blame for this Amm spike totally on the snail treatment. I've not had anything back from the manufacturer, but the fact that the leaflet wording seems dubious at best, and now I have this Amm spike seems fairly 'coincidental' to me.
So now I have a 300L tank that I can't provide with donor filter media, a 60L tank that has had it's bacteria colony damaged in some way that now means I will have to check it each day to make sure it doesn't revert to a 'Fish-In' cycle, and to top it all off, the useless stuff didn't even seem to touch the damn snails who were still sliding around everywhere!

Just thought I'd better say, in case anyone else decided to try this bottle of junk in the future

 

[Corleone]

Did it work on the snails? It might not bacterial damage directly, but if you killed off a lot of snails, they decay quickly and can cause an ammonia spike beyond what your bacteria can handle.

 

[Schmill]

Doesn't appear to have done, they are still all over the tank...

Checked the Ammonia agian about an hour ago, and it's still somewhere very close to the zero colour, but I've done a 25% water change just to be sure.
To be fair it does warn on the bottle that you should try to remove as many by hand before using it as possible so as not to cause the massive 'kill-off' followed by spike that you said about. However I DID remove all I could see by hand before the treatment, and after the treatment none seemed to have been killed off, (there numbers have increased from when I plucked the first load out of the tank), so I'm not sure what caused the spike.
Needless to say, I won't be putting the treatment into the tank again. Maybe as a bath for new plants before they go in the tank, but never directly into the tanks.

 

[OldMan47]

Just keep a close eye on things. Like Corleone said, you may have killed your filter, I don't think he was quite that blunt. If you have a 300L cycled tank, you could treat part of the filter from that tank with a copper based snail killer, which will work, then use it to clone the filter on the 60L. At least that way you could get things back to normal more quickly in the 60.

 

[Schmill]

Nope, the 300L tank isn't cycled yet, in fact I was hoping to speed it up but cloning from some of the material from the 60L tank, but thats not going to happen now until the 60L is more settled.

Tell me more about the copper treatments please, are these 'snail killers' safe for the filter media bacteria? (Although I would guess the fish wouldn't like it much?)

 

[robryb]

Just to update an old topic as information about this is hard to find, so I thought I would share my experiences

I tried some Gastropex Snail treatment, after getting fed up of picking snails out by hand every morning. I have a cycled tank and I measured my water readings before starting treatment, and after treatment.

Just some info:
The leaflet with the treatment states that you should remove any activated carbon from your filter for the duration of the treatment, as it neutralizes its effectiveness. You can leave it in, of course, it just means that the treament wont work as well, and you'll need to replace the activated carbon filter after the treatment. It mentions it does not contain copper.

After dosing my tank for 3 days I noticed:
- No spike in ammonia/nitrite/nitrate readings
- Biological filter still functioning ok
- Alot of snail die-off
- Fish seem fine

I removed any snails that died to stop polluting the tank.

After a week, not all the snails had been killed. I still found some milling about. The leaflet says a water change is not necessary, but I'd prefer getting rid of the meds and getting some clean water in there. I did a 50% water change, followed by another 20% a few days later. I guess for this product to work you might need to do 2 rounds of treatment. I might keep it just as a bath for any new plants.

So, after all that, I still got some snails, alot less, but any left will reproduce. I have a bamboo shrimp in the tank as well, he's fine. I've now bought a clown loach to try and get rid of the little armoured snot balls, hopefully he does the trick!

 

[justjon]

Have you not considered an assasin snail? I hear they rock for killing them.

 

[Janalgem]

Just like to add my experiences in this subject. Found I had snails so bought three Loach still the snails grew in number went and bought three Assassin Snails on the recommendation of a local aquarium provider still they multiplied. Was then advised by a different fish keeper to use cucumber and remove after leaving overnight this was tedious. So have been looking for a chemical additive to remove them, and just found Gastropex have been again advised to remove all carbon filtration but should I also remove my bacteria media to save this for later?

 

[misterpro]

I'd like to chime in on this one, with an observation...
 
I used it on one of my small tanks that was completely infested with bladder snails and small planorbids (check species here in case you don't know them), and it killed all bladder snails in about a week.  The planorbids however were completely unaffected, and I have no idea why.  I guess there are immune to whatever is in the gastropex.
 
I now have some assassins working on them and the numbers have been declining over the last few weeks.
 
The moral of my story being...  If you've got a planorbid infestation, I wouldn't even bother with gastropex.
 

Just like to add my experiences in this subject. Found I had snails so bought three Loach still the snails grew in number went and bought three Assassin Snails on the recommendation of a local aquarium provider still they multiplied. Was then advised by a different fish keeper to use cucumber and remove after leaving overnight this was tedious. So have been looking for a chemical additive to remove them, and just found Gastropex have been again advised to remove all carbon filtration but should I also remove my bacteria media to save this for later?

 
It doesn't affect your good bacteria at all.  They only advise against the activated carbon because it can remove the product from your water.