Volunteer Snails *sigh*

Pics? Always dip new plants in potassium permanganate to kill hitchhikers.

-Lisa

Did a quick reconnoiter of my first tank (planted only with stuff from Albany Aquarium) and there are no little blue-grey volunteers in there, but there are some in the bucket grow out tank I'm using to cycle the Amazonia for my mom's Christmas tank (which is what most of the Sweet Aquatic plants were for). There are also some tiny brown/black snails with a longer, spiraling shell. GACK!

And the little blue-grey ones are not apple snails. Caught one, and there's no flap. Since everything is fresh water, I'm clearly not going to be lucky enough to have them be nerites.

Do I let them grow out a bit or go on the attack with my turkey baster?

Kunsthure said:

Pics? Always dip new plants in potassium permanganate to kill hitchhikers.

-Lisa

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Hitchhikers never occurred to me (first planted tanks; lesson learned!). They're so small I can't get a pic to turn out. Let me see if I can find a bigger one . . .

Can't get a pic that looks like anything but a tiny blob. Guess I'll start catching them and putting them in my spare tank (out of curiosity, to see what they turn out to be). They appear to be eating algae off the plants, rather than eating the plants themselves, which is a good thing.

I had some Jungle Lab's ClearWater laying around, so I'm treating my mom's plants with it right now. Hopefully I won't pass on the hordes of volunteer snails to her . . . And I'm removing all the ones I can find from my tank and putting them in the extra "grow out" tank.

Who knows, they may turn out to be something nice (and I'm just going to keep telling myself that, LOL!).

Sounds like pond snails to me. Its not the end of the world. They will usually blow up into plague sized proportions then eat all of the available food and die off one by one until you only have a few left. This process usually takes a few months to run its course. Removing snails or smashing them lengthens the process.

I also have these and mine most defenly eat plants. They eat the new growth on my lilies and other soft leaf plants. I was picking them off but now seem to have a million babies. I have had something similar before but had no problem. This seems to be something different.I guess its time to bring in a few loaches and hope the clear them out. Trapping a few MTS and rams horn and moving them to a new tank. I hope you don't have them same variety as it will be a pain to clear them up.

Well, if it comes down to it, I'll break the whole tank down, move the fish and ramshorns, and treat all the plants and decor. I treated all of my mom's plants last night, so hopefully I won't pass this delightful problem on . . .

They're probably pond snails, and the spiral ones likely are MTS. They don't eat plants, just biofilm and algae. They're hitchikers present in almost all major nursery's plants. In the right conditions they can overpopulate a tank quickly, but IME their populations seem to be boom, bust. If they are in fact pond snails, then they don't harm anything, but many people seem to hate them with a passion.

Sharkfood said:

They're probably pond snails, and the spiral ones likely are MTS. They don't eat plants, just biofilm and algae.

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I've only found on of these type so far. *shrug* It's in the extra tank with all the others that I'm plucking out of my betta tank. Eventually they'll be big enough to identify.

Big enough to identify now, and yeah, they're pond snails. Ugh.