What are these small brown snails?

I recently purchased some duckweed and there are maybe 30 of these small brown snails. No idea what they are because i didn't know about them, does anyone know what they might be? The largest are smaller than my pinkie nail, and the smallest are smaller than a pin head and i put them in my tank not thinking much of it because its not a well planted tank (this duckweed was going to be some of my beginning plants) will they kill my anubius nana or java fern?

GodOfFood said:

I recently purchased some duckweed and there are maybe 30 of these small brown snails. No idea what they are because i didn't know about them, does anyone know what they might be? The largest are smaller than my pinkie nail, and the smallest are smaller than a pin head and i put them in my tank not thinking much of it because its not a well planted tank (this duckweed was going to be some of my beginning plants) will they kill my anubius nana or java fern?

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My betta has already tried eating one but backed off, they seem to have pretty good suction.

These are either pond snails or bladder snails, the two most common arrivals on plants (or chunks of wood from an aquarium). I can never tell them apart, but it doesn't matter as they are basically identical in all respects. There is a photo-descriptive article on snails on this forum, here:

They are harmless to fish, and will not eat healthy live plants. They will graze surfaces of plant leaves and every other surface eating algae and other live food that is part of the biofilm, and they will eat dead organic matter, and of course any fish food that the fish don't eat. Very few fish will (or are able to) eat snails, and those that do tend to have real issues of their own so that is never a good option to removing them (if you want to).

These harmless snails are part of a healthy ecosystem. They reproduce rapidly when food is available, and that means any natural food which is always going to be present. Not overfeeding fish will avoid excess fish food so that helps to keep them in check.

I accidentally got some in my tank with the first plants i got, hey are fine to haven in the tank and help to keep it clean .
Just make sure that you keep the population under control otherwise they will take over if they have lots of food, if you own a few Cory catfish they will eat some of the eggs and small snails to keep the population under control

They are not bad and in fact helpful as mentioned above, and particularly good if you don't have other types of snails grazing the tank such as nerite snails. If you get to a point where you feel there are too many, cutting down on feeding for a couple of days will reduce their numbers.

GodOfFood said:

I recently purchased some duckweed and there are maybe 30 of these small brown snails. No idea what they are because i didn't know about them, does anyone know what they might be? The largest are smaller than my pinkie nail, and the smallest are smaller than a pin head and i put them in my tank not thinking much of it because its not a well planted tank (this duckweed was going to be some of my beginning plants) will they kill my anubius nana or java fern?

Click to expand...

Bladder or pond snails
Cute lil guys but reproduce very fast if your tank has good conditons
Will help clean up dead leaves and dead fish and rot gunk, will clean leaves of diatoms and algae but wont damage leaves, but beware if u wanna keep em cos every animal you add will only increse the bioload but might make your plant happier