[variable]

This tank has been running since 2012, with black brush algae nearly its whole life. I went through a period of neglecting my tanks, and the bba went into remission with dimmed lights and low nutrients (one lonely nerite).

Recently I got more motivated to care for my tanks, upped the lights, and bought some shrimp and pagoda snails. The bba came back with the lights, as expected. The snails have been going after the algae on the glass and crypt parva for about 3 weeks. Then yesterday I saw one with his nose in the bba. I thought he was looking for bits of food in it, like the shrimp do. Then I saw the clump of algae looked a bit trimmed. That’s the first photo, the second is the next day. He ate it!

Tonight I caught him at it and had to share - third pic is him chowing down, fourth is when he moved on, and fifth is the bare nubs of bba left in his wake. (Sorry, don't post a lot of photos, so I don't know how to mix them in with text like captions)

This is a game changer for me. I have bba on the hardscape in all my tanks - they are all low light, so it stays in balance with my plants, but it would be awesome if these snails could help reduce it.

 

[varanidguy]

Those are awesome looking snails! And you're right, that's possibly a great game changer!

Where'd you get them? I can only find them in stock at Aquatic Arts and paying $30 shipping for snails is a hard thing to do...

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[variable]

I got them at my lfs, Austin AquaDome. I saw the ones at Aquatic Arts too, but like you say, shipping is painful if that's all you're buying.

 

[varanidguy]

I got them at my lfs, Austin AquaDome. I saw the ones at Aquatic Arts too, but like you say, shipping is painful if that's all you're buying.

Have you had any issues with them eating plants? Aquatic Arts site says they might munch on finer leaves.

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[variable]

No, they spent the first 3 weeks cleaning algae off my crypt parva and the tank glass. No damage to the plants, or to the Christmas moss and subwassertang.

My husband was horrified that they were eating "that black stuff" (he's fond of the snails), and asked if I was feeding them - which I wasn't. I added some algae crumbles and flake to the tank, and haven't seen them eating the bba since. So I suspect the bba grazing is a last resort when food gets limited - but even under those conditions, they didn't eat the plants.

Note, the only plants in the tank are anubias, crypt parva, and the mosses, so fairly tough, no thin leaved stems or delicate plants.