Snail explosion... lol

AaronCombs

So I totally buy plants for my tanks...

However I'ma smart one, or... I've been a hobbyist to long lol...

I have a small tank in which I allow plants to grow , or as a trail period to make sure snails aren't hiding...

Well come to find out the Java Moss I purchased was covered in baby snails...

Within 3 days my tank has atleast 10 baby snails... and I even found one larger one, about 5-6 mm in size...

Sadly though I can't decide if I want to keep them and transport them to my experiment tank ... which is the 10g Goldfish tank I'm using to see if no w/c's will effect anything.
I'm growing the Java Moss and java ferns for that tank currently so I might send them in as cleanup on the plants. We'll see...


Any idea's or thoughts?

Oh ps my algae eater I have died a few months back so my main tanks need some cleanup

d0r0g0

Goldfish tend to eat pond snails, or at least mine does. I actually let him swim in my tropical tank whenever I notice the snails are beginning to overwhelm the tank - usually every 3 months.

I'd say snails are a pretty good treat for Goldfish as long as you don't feel bad for the snails.

Oldfishlady

I like the common snails like the pond snail, rams horn and especially the livebearing trumpet snail, they have jobs in my natural planted tanks, I need them to eat the decaying plant matter and consume some algae on the leaves of the plants and I love the trumpets that burrow in the soil to help pull oxygen into the soil to help prevent anaerobic spots.....they also help clean up left over food and help make infusoria for fry food naturally......

They can get out of control and look ugly when over populated...but that is easy to take care of by trapping them in a small glass with bait like an algae wafer, toss them or smash and feed them to the fish...yummy treat.....

Snails IMHO are part of the little ecosystem we create in a closed system just like the algae......sometime it is a good thing in small amounts........just like the natural environment our fish live in......

Austin

Every once in a while I see a snail and I just put my hand in the tank and smash it... and lately I haven't seen any. I think if you kill the one or two odd ones you see they'll eventually die off. Also, I think I heard/rad somewhere that snails "explode" when theres too much left over fish food and such for them to feed on.

Also I don't think you'll be able to keep a Goldfish in a 10g tank w/o water changes. You're just going to slowly kill off the gold fish with it's waste.

If you are going to do this experiment, KEEP CHECK OF ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate! If they get too high, realize that the experiment is not going to work, and do the necessary water changes.

Redknee

Buy o1 or 2 anentome helena(snail assassin), they will not eat all snails as just 2 of them are not that fast but they will keep the snail population under control. Consider them to be the "second day pill" .

AaronCombs

lol I have had different ideas with them... usually I just smash em. I'll probably keep some and let the rest die off or spread them out between my tanks.

As for the Goldfish tank, it's being monitored daily. I've been in the hobby business for awhile now so it's nothing new for me. The tank receives water as it evaporates. I'll be writing up a topic on it later. I've done testing similar to what I'm doing now, however it was not as detailed as the previous one.

rsn48

Assassin snails is one answer.

You can damage a fish without it being visible, so don't experiment with your gold fish. That experiment has been carried out millions of times when people purchase a gold fish bowl then don't change the water and just top up. Why would your gold fish be immune to problems of poor water due to a lack of changing out the old for the new?

AaronCombs

I'm looking to see if you can stabilize the aquarium without water changes. While doing so seeing what can be done to counter act anything that might pop up. I was able to successfully run a 100 gallon tank with this method for 6+ months. levels never fluctuated to a concern. I'm looking this time to do the same but document everything in the process. I had to take it down due to moving which didn't help any.