Snails At The Surface

[Ryandsimmons]

The last 5 days or so I have found snails at the surface of the water of my tank during the day. These are Malaysian Trumpet Snails I think, and from what I read this is a bad thing.

Now all my fish look healthy as can be, all my readings are fine (pH 8, Ammonia 0, Nitrite, 0 Nitrate 20) The plants look healthy, it is 125litres with only 2 Platys, 2 Black Skirt Tetras and 4 Black Phantom Tetras so tocking is certainly not an issue.

I have had some issues with a scum on the surface of the water due to I think an overstocked biomedia section in the filter (to aid the fish in cycling)but I have aggressively been wiping this away with tissue after tissue for the past few days and the issue seems to be under control now and I have removed a lot of the media.

Should I be concerned about this? They were nocturnal only for the first couple of weeks, but I cannot figure out at all why they suddenly seem to indicate bad water. I have done 30% changes every day as a precaution, but should I do anything else?

Many than ks

Ryan

 

[aly_starh]

If they are MTS, they arent bad. They are quite good actually as they will clean algea and sift the sand form what i've read.

 

[BryceHockey]

I have had some issues with a scum on the surface of the water due to I think an overstocked biomedia section in the filter (to aid the fish in cycling)but I have aggressively been wiping this away with tissue after tissue for the past few days and the issue seems to be under control now and I have removed a lot of the media.

I just wanted to point out that hopefully you're using something without any lotions or chemicals on it (I would think those kleenex with the lotion would be dangerous if they were touching the water). I usually use plain paper towel for anything near the tank water.

 

[Ryandsimmons]

If they are MTS, they arent bad. They are quite good actually as they will clean algea and sift the sand form what i've read.

I heard that the snails are good, but that them being at the surface during the day was a very bad thing.

 

[waterdrop]

Perhaps you are not getting a high enough turnover rate with the filter? Have you studied the flow rate published for the filter and worked out the turnover rate for the water volume you have? Additionally, the amount of surface disturbance is important. You want a pretty good flow across the top waters.

There are a lot of threads on TFF concerning snails. You can search back or you could even look for some of my own past posts where I've summarized how to work in the process of keeping them under control as part of your maintenance routine. Once you have them its usually an ongoing thing. Its also true, as mentioned above, that snails are a perfectly healthy thing (unless they indicate overfeeding) as far as the fish are concerned. They are a natural thing in the environments fish come from and they don't represent a significant addition to the bioload of a tank, compared to fish.

~~waterdrop~~