Experiences With Trumpet Snails

[teddyman5]

Just set up a sand based tank and I'm told Malaysian trumpet snails would be great to keep the sand clean and not anaerobic.Anybody got any experience as I get conflicting tails from great to a nightmare with good if you keep loaches as well. Any thoughts welcome.
Thanks

 

[Breeze7050]

MTS are very good at gently "kicking up" the sand and moving it around. Ive got a few in with my loaches and don't have any problems at all.... what kind of nightmare tails are you hearing??
Loaches will eat snails but the way the MTS is shaped it makes it hard for the loaches to eat them, plus MTS's are generally buried under the sand/gravel so the loaches ignore them/don't see them.

 

[teddyman5]

MTS are very good at gently "kicking up" the sand and moving it around. Ive got a few in with my loaches and don't have any problems at all.... what kind of nightmare tails are you hearing??
Loaches will eat snails but the way the MTS is shaped it makes it hard for the loaches to eat them, plus MTS's are generally buried under the sand/gravel so the loaches ignore them/don't see them.

I have heard that the tank can quickly be overrun with hundreds of snails and you can't control them and the only chance was to have loaches to eat them to try and control the population.

 

[severum boy]

I disagree, just collect the snails and sell them to a shop or online. They do breed fast (brought 10 a month or so back, thought they had done nothing, came down today and there is loads of babies around. Counted around 10 without bothering to much!), but I find then very helpfull. They dont eat plants, love algae and are really simple to look after.
Id recomend them to anyone, just not one with loaches.
Ps, they make great puffer food!

 

[teddyman5]

I disagree, just collect the snails and sell them to a shop or online. They do breed fast (brought 10 a month or so back, thought they had done nothing, came down today and there is loads of babies around. Counted around 10 without bothering to much!), but I find then very helpfull. They dont eat plants, love algae and are really simple to look after.
Id recomend them to anyone, just not one with loaches.
Ps, they make great puffer food!

Thanks for that

 

[severum boy]

No problem, anymore questions juat ask.

 

[mikey12421]

I second severum on this. I've had a great experience with MTS. Its really the other 'pest snails' that you want to worry about, bc they breed like MAD

- Mike

 

[Breeze7050]

I second severum on this. I've had a great experience with MTS. Its really the other 'pest snails' that you want to worry about, bc they breed like MAD

- Mike

Like Mikey says, the "pest snails" breed a lot faster than the MTS. My MTS have had a few babies and I had NO IDEA since they are always under the gravel. I was shocked to walk downstairs one day and see a baby MTS on the glass. That is the one and only Ive seen in the few months they've been in my tanks. And I haven't seen a single baby in my 55G - not to say they aren't there, but they aren't causing any problems!

 

[discus dreamer]

Likewise
I bought 6 MTS and didn't see them again for some time, obviously doing their stuff cleaning up the sand. They have multiplied and I occasionaly see a group of little MTS on my flakier bit of bog wood and i find baby ones in the filter canister. If you ever have an oxygen crash they will all suddenly appear on the glass near the top of the tank and are a good warning of something not right.
The little round snails that plague my small tank are another matter they just don't go away no matter how many I remove and are always all over the place.
Any ideas for a fish that will eat them but doesn't get big and isn't agressive?
DD

 

[vancouver]

If you want to kill them off.. let the tank water go cold.

I had 100s in one of my tanks.. no fish left in it so I turned off the heater.. now I have 100s of empty shells in there. So if you are over-run and want to get rid of them down the road, move your fish and let the tank water go cold and it should kill em off.

 

[Opcn]

MTS do not make good puffer food. The shell is thick and tightly spiraled and the snail is so small that it won't attract the attention of puffers with teeth that are strong enough to not be at risk. Snails are almost never a problem in a freshwater tank if you don't overfeed.

 

[millym]

hi
i found a mts in our tank around a year and a half ago..........we now are seriously infested. most weeks i manually remove around 50-80 of these little b****s and still leave loads, i know having a few is good for the tank as they do clean up/turn over the gravel, but once you have them it is really really hard to keep their numbers under control. they are also unsightly as often during the day a huge parade of them will slide up the front of our tank up towards the lights..its not pretty. i dont like killing any live thing/creature, but if i didnt remove heaps of these as ive said every week we would have 2 inches of gravel in our tank topped by 1 inch solid of these snails. we have 2 big yoyo loaches who dont touch them and we also have amano & cherry shrimp so cant use any form of snail killer chemical in our tank. given the choice i would NOT introduce them by choice........ours came in with plants we'd bought.