some how i had a big outbreak of these little snails growing in my 15 gallon ghost shrimp tank.. They're climbing all over the glass and skimming the surface of the water. Are they any good for feeding? or are they useless? WIll my Red Piranhas eat these or should i drop them in my convict tank?
Hundreds of small snails, what do i do with these?
- Thread starter rvd
- Start date
Pirahna and convicts most likley would not eat snails. Puffers and loaches are great at ridding an aquarium of snails but they would also eat your ghost shrimp. The medications designed to kill snails would kill your ghost shrimp. I think what I would do is slowly add synthetic sea salt like red sea or instant ocean to your ghost shrimp tank over several days untill you start seeing snail loss. The ghost shrimp will survive bracking and probibly full strength salt water but fresh water snails wont. Afterwards, you can do small water changes to slowly bring the salt level back down. Keeping the aquarium extra clean will help keep snail populations down but won't get rid of them.
Joel
Joel
Howdy,
Excess snail populations are most often due to leftover food in the tank. That's what they live off. I'd say pick the snails out one by one by hand and only feed what your shrimps will eat - not more. That should give you a pretty good handle on the population. Eradicationg all snails in an active shrimp tank will be tough. Of course, you can always empty it out and start over with new gravel, plants, filter media, ... you get the point. Trying the salt idea is not bad. Depending on if you have a planted tank or not...
HarleyK
Excess snail populations are most often due to leftover food in the tank. That's what they live off. I'd say pick the snails out one by one by hand and only feed what your shrimps will eat - not more. That should give you a pretty good handle on the population. Eradicationg all snails in an active shrimp tank will be tough. Of course, you can always empty it out and start over with new gravel, plants, filter media, ... you get the point. Trying the salt idea is not bad. Depending on if you have a planted tank or not...
HarleyK
It would probably be easier to take your shrimp out of the tank and put them in a a different tank for a couple days, or maybe in one of those plastic hampster cages that close but have ventalation holes, then you can keep them with your convicts wile you take care of the snails.
Since it is a small tank my suggestion is to put the shrimp in a new 5g bucket with your filter, pull out all you plants and give them a good rinse, net out and wipe out the snails and egg masses that you find, refill the tank with untreated water and a liter of hydrogen peroxide, and let it sit over, dump out the water again and give your gravel a good rinse, them refil the tank with dechlorinated water, replant it, and after double checking your temp., put the shrimp and filter back where they belong.
Zorro's got it down. The same thing happened to my needle-nose gar tank, and I bought a couple clown loaches, put the gar in a temporary tank, and let the loaches do their thing. The snails were gone in a day.
Take a slice of cucumber and rubber band it to a small plate and place it in the tank at night and when you get up in the morning the majority of the snails will be on the plate. Take the plate out and throw them away. Do this as needed to keep the population down.