Snails in Biomedia

[toehead11183]

I was cleaning my filters the other day and noticed tons of baby pond snails living in my filters. they were mainly in the biomedia. the got inside the media bags and grew up and many died leaving tons of snail shells in the bags. my question is, are the snails compramizing the biomedia by eating off of it?

 

[ewurm]

If you don't want your snails, send them to me. My loaches love them

 

[DasArab]

But in answer to your origional question the answer is no.

 

[Bderick67]

I also have snalis in two of my 4 xp3 canisters, they live in the prefilter rings(ehfimech and fluval Prefilter). The biomedia in these two cansiters does seem to have less gunk in it.

 

[toehead11183]

If you don't want your snails, send them to me. My loaches love them

i like my snails thank you. they slowly make their way to the top and get flushed out for my loaches and cichlids to eat. i was just wondering if they were hurting my BB

 

[FireMedic]

I have had and do have snails in my filters as well. The only problem that I have noticed is in the trickle plate of my wet dry. The snails get into/onto the plate and have died, leaving their shells to clog one or more drip holes. This only temporarily channnels H2O elsewhere. I check the plate every couple days.
Oh yeah, I added Clown Loaches, the problem dwindles by the the day.

 

[Crusty]

I was cleaning my filters the other day and noticed tons of baby pond snails living in my filters. they were mainly in the biomedia. the got inside the media bags and grew up and many died leaving tons of snail shells in the bags. my question is, are the snails compramizing the biomedia by eating off of it?

Short answer yes they are. The bacteria colonize the media, which is the point of the surface area and the snails remove the colonies of bacteria defeating the purpose of the filter. Not to mention they add an enormous bioload to the area in the filter itself, leaving less available food for the bacteria and hence much lower filter capacity.

I had them in one of my nexus 300 and they bloomed rampant. Had to stop feeding the system for a week to reduce their numbers. They are still in my pipework and through the tanks, just not in the numbers and by numbers I mean thousands of the little blighters.

 

[deepblue101]

HOB Setup?