Snails And Fishless Cycle Maintenance Dosage

[Uriel]

I appear to have aquired snails not sure if there ramshorn or apple snails(probably from plants). Now i'm currently doing my fishless cycle so would i be best to deal with them now before i introduce fish or should i leave them be. I was concidering introducing trumpet snails as i have sand substrate and have heard them digging about during day is a good thing but have also heard that they can become overpopulated and become a real pest.

Secondly if i fishlessly cycle a quarantine tank once it's completed can i keep adding a maintenance dose of ammonia to keep the tank cycled while empty and how much should this maintenance dose be or is there a better way of doing this ?

 

[waterdrop]

Both these topics get frequent discussion and a quick search of even just our freshwater beginners subforum should yield a large number of good threads.

Yes, its quite easy to maintain an empty quarantine tank with a simple eyedropper or syringe squirt of ammonia done when you are feeding the main tank. Just verify an amount that gives you roughly 2 to 3ppm (ie. some easy to judge squirt amount that happens to let your concentration fall somewhere in that range or so) and then just keep your bottle and squirter near the tank. (The other typical method is fishfood, although since its an organic approach it can lead to odors eventually.) The leading overall method is keeping a simple sponge filter running in a stocked tank, but while this is quite easy for those with multiple tanks, some of which have less display importance, its an aesthetic problem for those with only one main display tank besides the Q-tank I'd guess.

~~waterdrop~~