Snail ID please

Hi

I know it is not a very good pic but could someone ID this snail? And if so should it be removed or cloud it be beneficial to the take.

It must of been hitch hiking on some plants I bought.





Thx
Dec

It looks like a Pond snail, which is a very non informative description I know, as there are many types, don't squish it in your tank as it might contain eggs, do it in the sink or outside. They reproduce quickly and eat plants.

Well if they eat plants then they have to go. I'm gonna have to find out how to make a dip for any new plants I think.

This one was grazing on algae I though I may have got lucky and picked up a useful snail, oh well I guess I'll be hunting snails this evening.

I was thinking about my advice and was in doubt so I googlified it ! most are of the opinion that the snails only eat damaged or dying tissue which would be a good thing but the chances of an increase of their numbers wouldn't appeal to me. I prefer to have what I bought in my tanks rather than unwanted hitch-hikers.

H.

It looks like a young Great Pond Snail or something closely related. Not plant friendly at all. If left they will reproduce quite quickly and leave holes in your plants. If you squashed it in the tank I don't think the eggs would survive but Homer is probably right about doing it in the sink... why take the chance

Been looking this up and found something interesting. Looks like it might be something called a glutinous snail; quite rare in most of Europe and extinct in many parts but apparently pretty common in the royal and grand canals. Needs calcium rich, unpolluted water. Not sure how that works in a Dublin canal

Hmmm if they would eat some of my algae they could stay a while. I'm just cycling this tank so no fish at present. Although from what I see online even if they leave the plants alone they may be a problem just because they breed so fast.

Maybe I'll just watch them for a while and see what they do and try to get a better pic

Q_Comets wrote:

Hmmm if they would eat some of my algae they could stay a while. I'm just cycling this tank so no fish at present. Although from what I see online even if they leave the plants alone they may be a problem just because they breed so fast.

Maybe I'll just watch them for a while and see what they do and try to get a better pic

Its a pond snail. They normally come uninvited, mine came in a moss ball along with a MTS.

They wont eat your plants and they will eat most of your algae, they are real workhorses.

However, and this is my advice, as soon as you see it GRAB IT AND GET IT OUT OF YOUR TANK!!!!

Mine reproduced very quickly, and I mean VERY quickly.. I also got very excited when I saw my first one in the tank, he was minuscule.. and I also didnt have any fish in my tank back then so I said to myself, great!

In less than a week there were more than 40 of them, and they quickly grew well into the hundreds, I then started buying fish and asked about snail eating fish, some guy in maxizoo told me Khulis will take care of them, put some in, never seen them one of my khuli's eat a snail, ever, well, in fact never seen those khulis again (they are a bit shy). Then I was told chipmunk loaches will eat them, they were small enough to fit in my tank back then so I got a few, they did eat some but what happened is that the snails stopped coming out during the day and came out at night, chipmunks dont "work" at night. So back to square one, then as I was getting a bigger thank I decided to get clown loaches, they do love snails and got rid of quite a few, one day I stopped seeing snails so I though, mission accomplished they are all gone!

That's until I opened my filter to clean it up and found hundreds of them living inside my filter. One night as I was doing an emergency water change (high nitrite) I saw again hundreds of them attached to my echinodorus... From there on I decided to remove them manually.

I have attached a picture of how many of them I removed per night

After 2 weeks and as I was changing tanks I decided not to bother anymore.

Once I removed most of the fish I decided to get some assassin snails.. they kill a few of them but they could barely catch them, in the end, I had an ammonia spike and some of my assassin died, they didnt even bother with it.... they are virtually indestructible!!!

I will have a few of them in my nano along with my zebra nerites and my MTS... Overfeeding is a know reason why they might reproduce but with pond snails it is hard to control this as they will always have something to eat... they can lay 30-50 eggs per day.. so be warned!!!! They look cute but remove it before its too late!!! Once they start laying eggs you will never get rid off them

Yeah I was doing some maintenance this evening and pulled out 6 of these guys, I think I'm in trouble with these guys there are probably loads of them already I'm only seeing a few at the moment but they would have had plenty of food as I have been feeding the tank for the cycle and the plants they must have arrived on have been in there for 2 weeks.

Is there anything that will get rid of these cause obviously manually removing them does not seem like the answer.

Swear words!!!!

You are lucky you caught them this early, get a couple of Assassin snails, call your LFS and this should do the trick.

there may be hidden ones but the predatory snail should find and eat them.

H.

Assassin snails in my LFS if only. I guess I can get some delivered from SH or aquaworld.

My LFS doesn't stock such exotic items as assassin snails or very very exotic stuff like Anubias (large dollop of sarcasm here)

How many should I get?

Well that's a problem. Get 3 assassins per 5 gallons, however, I am telling you Assassin snail wont be able to catch all of them. I tried the same approach, I even put 5 pond snails and 3 assassin snails on a small breeding tank and 3 weeks later, I had 2 assassin left and 3 pond snails... Also, I dont think assassins they tolerate high ammonia levels either but hey, its worth a try.

the other problem is the eggs, they tend to lay eggs on leafs, they are hard to remove, my betta use to eat them but then they started laying eggs under the gravel..

Seahorse have a few of them, I brought mine back as they really werent up for the challenge.

Most snails will survive ammonia spikes, I have had these snails on a tank where the ammonia levels were as high as 7 ppm! and they still managed to survive, even plants were melting away while this little f..ckers were moving around like if nothing happened.

Not even copper or salt can kill them! they are the superman of the snail world

Try removing them by hand and hope that the assassins will help you remove the remaining ones

As far as I can tell, none of the "Surefire Snail Killers" like loaches, assassins etc are surefire snail killers. From what others say about assassins online they'll either decimate the pest snails or sit on their slimy arses scratching their shells in confusion! Definitely think Bohrio's two pronged approach is best

Q_Comets wrote:

Assassin snails in my LFS if only. I guess I can get some delivered from SH or aquaworld.

My LFS doesn't stock such exotic items as assassin snails or very very exotic stuff like Anubias (large dollop of sarcasm here)

How many should I get?

eSHa Gastropex from eSHa labs works to a degree, try after reading reviews, some say it works, others........

You could also grab a few Small Clown Loaches. Given the softness of these snail shells, they should munch through them!! One Clown is not a happy clown so get at least three.

You can see how a little problem leads to much bigger, costly ones!

Try a mixture of all said solutions and it should dent, if not totally remove the problem.

H.

Thx all for the help. I am pulling hem out whenever I see one and I will do a container with algae wafer as bait. I will try to get some assassins but I think it will be another month or so before I can add fish, only running 2 weeks and no nitrite yet.

What loaches are small enough for a 180l tank?

The top snail killers are Clown Loaches but they will get big (very slowly reaching 10 inches or more), like someone already said get 3 small ones (around 2-3 inches) they will love your snails. I think someone already mentioned this, the weakest point on a pond snails is their shell, is very thin so clown loaches will tear it apart if necessary.

Ambastaia sidthimunki(chipmunk loaches) are good to, much smaller (around 3 inches max) but they are not as good as clown loaches at killing snails, also, I had to starve mine a bit before they will touch a snail. They are the smallest snail eaters outthere (with the exception of dwarf puffers but these ones dont really get along with anyone), puffers are also excellent snail eaters (so I have heard) but I have never had one as it wouldnt get along with my betta.

also, bear in mind what other fish you are going to put in that tank, make sure they are compatible

Wait till lights out time when they all come out,
then do a water change with a hose to suck them all up.
Also if you weigh down a lettuce leaf or a pleco tablet/wafer,
they will all scramble on to it. So you can just lift them all out.

So last night at lights out time I dropped an algae wafer in the tank planning on coming back in a while to evict some snails. Much to my delight no snails just a mostly dissolved wafer.

I know I'm not out of the woods yet but I may have got all the adults out, fingers crossed maybe they didn't leave a whole bunch of eggs.

Or maybe you've just got a bunch of very wiley snails, biding their time, lulling you into a false sense of security until *WHAMMO*... they launch a massed attack!

Just a thought...

The Lettuce trick never worked for me, cucumber seems to be more attractive. These snails are not nocturnal although they are more active at night, but unless there are predators around they will come out day or night

There are snail traps for sale out there, they might be worth a go, never tried them myself, if they have laid eggs you should be able to see them on leaves or decorations, they are transparent jelly looking sacks, hard to remove but possible with a brush.

LemonJelly wrote:

Or maybe you've just got a bunch of very wiley snails, biding their time, lulling you into a false sense of security until *WHAMMO*... they launch a massed attack!

Just a thought...

I need to order a few bits so I think I'll add a snail trap I think they are only a few euro

Hi

This is an old one but thought I would update anyway.

I got 2 assassin snails and while I haven't seen them once since added them I am finding the empty snail shells.

So thanks for the advice.
Dec

Q_Comets wrote:

Hi

This is an old one but thought I would update anyway.

I got 2 assassin snails and while I haven't seen them once since added them I am finding the empty snail shells.

So thanks for the advice.
Dec

They don't call 'em assassins fer nuthin'