Pest Snails!

[Channti]

So; Today was waterchange day on my 46 gallon tank. As I'm draining the water, something weird-shaped caught my attention under my driftwood. It was dark, round, and looked strangely like a chunk of Silas Poo (my bird, a cockatiel). Looked as though the three new yoyo loaches had claimed it as their own, so I stuck my hand in to pull it out just in case. Well... as I pulled it out of the darkness, I realized it was NOT a chunk of Silas Poo, but an empty snail shell. The empty shell was about 1/2 cm long.

Now I've got two questions.
How the heck did I get snails in my tank?
Where is the snail?

I have not added any new plants for about 4 weeks. The plants I added 4 weeks ago spent 2 weeks in the mail system and arrived to me as a root structure (no leaves, no room for snail eggs).

Checked out the snail ID thread on here and discovered that it's the Pond Snail I've got in my tank. I'm not impressed. As I drained the tank, I found another little sucker (about 1/4cm long) inching his way up the glass. scoured the tank looking for more but found nothing....

How many of these can I expect to find?
Is there an easy way to get rid of them?
What happened to the snail who inhabited the empty shell I found?

Stocking in tank:
2 neon tetras (old, intolerant to new neons)
7 serpae tetras
3 yoyo loaches (new in the past 24 hours)

I'm seriously ticked. I didn't want -any- snails in this tank.

 

[jonnyf84]

its empty because it either died or was eaten by your loaches or a combination of the two, loaches will pick off the odd 1 or 2 but are not ideal snail eaters, puffers are great snail eaters but won't mix with your stock so try some assassin snails aka snail eating snails. your roots may have contained eggs which can survive out of water, if not then who knows, life finds a way!

 

[ajs2294]

Unfortunately getting rid of ALL the snails is pretty close to impossible. Don't use the silly chemicals they sell to kill snails these have varied bad effects from killing plants and bacteria in your filters. You can try a loach but they don't cut down on populations that fast and can be a pest in of themselves. You could also try to find an assassin snail theses do well to keep the population down. Another trick is turn your lights of at night and wait about an hour then come back and turn on the lights and siphon as many snails as you can out kind of like you do in a water change. Do this for a few days and you'll see a drastic decrease in your snail population. But all together in small numbers and kept under control with out over feeding the tank you wont notice them much.

 

[Channti]

I've found a total of three now. The original two, plus one that my loach attacked and destroyed (really cool to watch actually). They're all still very small.

Will the empty shells in the tank have any kind of effect on my water parameters?

 

[JoshuaA]

I found we had 2 snails during the time we were cycling a tank, for a month it lived in a 8.4pH tank with Ammonia and Nitrite through the roof at times and Nitrate obviously over 9000. We felt sorry on these guys and called the surviving one "Ambitious". We left it in the tank and added plants and fish once the cycle was over, unfortunately the first day I went to do a water change I accidentally crushed it .

Anyway the next time we added plants more snails came, we just scraped them out with a net or one of our JLB long handled tank cleaner things. If we couldn't get it out we just crushed it and within days the snail population was zero and has been ever since in my girlfriends tank.

However in my tank there is probably about 2/3 unwanted snails however I use it as a sign that I'm over feeding if the population booms, though if I ever do want to remove them It's fairly easy by either killing them or just removing them with a net.

I hear the whole feeding with a slice of lettuce works quite well and then removing the lettuce. However I think if you don't remove all the snails that have fed you may well just be feeding the population more haha. I think just hunting and killing the ones you find will help.

 

[Channti]

I've set up a "Jar of Death" next to the tank. In the Jar of Death are all of the live snails that I've caught so far. My little brother's friend is going to take them (apparently he's got a puffer who adores the snails!). Its just a real pain for me, because I went to such great lengths to ensure I had no snails in the tank... and then low-and-behold.... SNAILS!.

I had some very pretty words to describe how I was feeling when I was doing the waterchange.
Very pretty indeed.

Hopefully I can manage to kill them off as I see them and my loaches will make short work of the others. If anything, I underfeed the tank, so I doubt a snail population will survive long.

 

[JoshuaA]

They feed on dying plants etc as well I believe, however it's not that bad to have them in the tank after all they are tiny. Though if you're not putting them to waste great !

 

[fishnovice]

What's wrong with snails? They are not only harmless but beneficial in clearing away dead plants and excess food. Nothing beats a thriving population of MTS for keeping sand spotless!

 

[ajs2294]

What's wrong with snails? They are not only harmless but beneficial in clearing away dead plants and excess food. Nothing beats a thriving population of MTS for keeping sand spotless!

Many snails reproduce rapidly leaving unsightly snails all over your tank. Not to mention if you have some nice swords they make a mess of them. But for the most part they are only as bad as you make them.