gale said:
lucky62 said:
During quarantine of new arrivals is the time to observe , you're not going to see much on snails , but expect it , do frequent water changes [ helpful in both bacterial and parasite problems ], I do them every other day for a week or 2 , maybe light salt baths , raise the temp for a few days , I think the precautions are Worth it , if you lost an entire tank of fish and plants because of something like this it can be heart breaking , and it's happened to me in the past , so I see a
benefit to quarantining every thing , even plants .
Quarantining is nothing new , and it's a good practice .
What would be the best way to quarantine them? I'm getting a lot of 50, and I have some pint jars to keep them in. Should I put some flake food in there with them? Gravel? Is it enough to have the jars half full? 3/4?
yeah I'm full of questions. :roll eyes:
Sorry I didn't mean to make you paranoid .
50 you say , jars would be fine , you don't need gravel at first , maybe after a few days and enough for them burrow into , or they think they are burrowing .
When you get them , try and make sure they are all alive , If you smell decay , look real close , if you find dead ones discard them right away .
Don't feed them for the 1st day or 2 either . They'll eat flake food once it sinks [ don't feed too much ].
3/4 of the way should be good .
remember to take a portion of the water out when doing a water change [ 10 % ], some people will replace what has evaporated , but this doesn't remove things like ammonia , nitrites , nitrates , metals etc. things that build up and can deteriorate the animals health . Water changes can improve health , and help to improve bacterial [ the bad kind ] and parasite problems that might exist.
You may need to condition your tap water , to remove heavy metals , chlorine and/or chloramine .
Water changes are pretty much all you can do for snails or any animal for that matter , as PT said , any thing you may use to treat for disease or illness may kill the snails .
I would change the water every other day for a week or so [ maybe 2 ], and swirl the the jars as often as you can , to circulate the water . [ A small tank/ with air pump would be better ] , make do with what you have .
The biggest thing is if you get the sight unseen , you don't know where they are coming from , and even if you did there are still many things you can't see .
All this may seem like a lot of trouble / a waist of time to go through for snails , but I.M.O it's important to try , not as much for the snails , but for your tanks other inhabitants , 3 to 4 weeks should be plenty , I put mine in the the main tank at about 2 1/2 , but I also gave mine light salt baths the first 2 days [ 1 tsp to 1 gal of water for like 5 Min's , this is not without risk though ].
It's good to be full of questions , many of us have answers , some the same and some not , put it together with your own thoughts and see what happens .
Oh by the way , from those 50 snails you should never have to worry about getting more , unless you have to use strong meads for some reason .
We have them in every tank my son and I own , they really earn their keep .
If you have any other Qs , you can always PM me , I usually come at least once a day .
A few years back I never quarantined any thing , I didn't do regular water changes either ,didn't think I had to , I didn't know any better , now I do .
So I shouldn't bother to quarantine them?
. And i see your point as well.
