[AdamTill]

Hi folks,

I've had a 90 going for a few months now, and it's had a huge population of mini ramshorn snails forever.

Last week my wife asked where they all went, and when I went to do maintenance there were a ton of empty snail shells all over the place.

Otos, amano shrimp, trumpets etc all fine, just all the ramshorns up and died. There are two assassin snails, but unless they went all kungfu warrior all of a sudden there's no way they did this in a week or so.

Anybody ever experience this before? Not complaining, I have to say.

My only guess is that whatever they were eating got used up, but there's always plenty of food in the tank.

 

[CowBoYReX]

That's strange, please let me know when you find out, lol. I could use that. Hopefully you find some help

 

[WaterLife]

That is strange. I know ramshorn can go a whole lot longer than a week without food. Even without surface agitation and even in high ammonia levels. They can even survive quite a long time in really acidic water. Highly doubt the assassins could kill nearly that many in that time frame, even if they were starving. Any other fish in the tank? Are the shells completely empty or is there remnants that have grown fungus? If there is still a dead snail inside the shell, is it blackened within the center on the spiraled shell? Some type of infection would be my guess.

 

[MtAnimals]

are you dosing micros? I think the ramshorns are particularly sensitive to the copper.I had a massive ramshorn die off in my 45 when I was first tried out full EI dosing.

 

[Yukiharu]

My amanos make snacks out of my ramshorns and I end up with a large pile of shells in the tank. Not sure if they would go after mini ramshorns or not...

 

[AdamTill]

My amanos make snacks out of my ramshorns and I end up with a large pile of shells in the tank. Not sure if they would go after mini ramshorns or not...

I do have 6 amanos, but again, that's not very much for a 90.

MtAnimals - I'm doing 1/3 dosing of PPS-Pro, but I have been from the beginning. Don't think that'd be it, or the population wouldn't have exploded in the first place.

Odd, at any rate.

 

[sohankpatel]

I wish that would happen, I generously dose EI in my 55, and I have thousands of ramshorn and pond snails, so the copper must not be affecting them.

 

[d33pVI]

I've found that snail populations often have big swings like that in my tanks. They get introduced, wildly overpopulate under good conditions, and then basically eat themselves out of house and home. Eventually the population comes back into equilibrium.

 

[Nordic]

I hate how when I still had gravel, you could basically throw away the gravel once you have a die out like that, or you have to look at the crappy shells the whole time.
Luckily my swordails have learned to bite snails dead when they skim the water surface and then suck out the shells, the babies get right in there.

 

[Calestus]

I overdosed iron, my guess is in the 1-2ppm range and it nuked all my rams. Pond snails seemed to not care.

 

[garfieldnfish]

2 assassins would not even put a dent into a large mini ramshorn population. They can only eat so much. But out of all my tanks I only have 3 tanks that have mini Ramshorn while there are MTSs in all of them. You would think that by now they would have infiltrated every tank but even when I add some to the other tanks they just don't catch on. I use equilibrium in my fish tanks and shrimp specific minerals in the shrimp tanks. The mini ramshorns are in tanks with fish only. In my shrimp tanks they just won't catch on at all.

 

[UrosBGD]

I hate how when I still had gravel, you could basically throw away the gravel once you have a die out like that, or you have to look at the crappy shells the whole time.

Luckily my swordails have learned to bite snails dead when they skim the water surface and then suck out the shells, the babies get right in there.

Or you just vacum them out ☺

Sent from mTalk

 

[vinizuh]

Same here, 90 gallon tank, had mini rams since the beginning. Tons of them. Then after maybe half a year the population went almost non existent. I still have some but the numbers stays small. There is plenty algae for them to eat too lol. I did notice however when I decided to increase Co2 is when i started seeing less and less snails around.. also noticed they stay high up in the upper levels of the tank more than the bottom.

 

[tapwater]

Do you dose magnesium at all?

 

[AdamTill]

There's magnesium in the PPS Pro solution, but I'm only using a 1/3-1/4 dose. Other than that, a bit of calcium once in a while, and vinegar at 50ml/day. All from the beginning.

 

[tapwater]

Other Methods of Controlling Snails and slugs

A vinegar water mix or just straight vinegar will kill snails and slugs but must be sprayed directly on them. It works in the same way as salt does. Vinegar is an acid and dissolves the mucus soaked slime blobs we call snails and slugs. Put salt on a slug and the same thing happens.

 

[AdamTill]

Excellent...

 

[CowBoYReX]

There's magnesium in the PPS Pro solution, but I'm only using a 1/3-1/4 dose. Other than that, a bit of calcium once in a while, and vinegar at 50ml/day. All from the beginning.

What are you adding vinegar for?

 

[AdamTill]

I was intrigued by this: Dosing Vinegar in Your Aquarium | ScapeFu046 - ScapeFu

 

[alcimedes]

do you happen to have high iron in the tank? that is an interesting theory based on what I've seen in a few tanks over the years.