How can I treat new plants for snails?

[realgwyneth]

Title pretty much says it all. My LFS has snails in the tanks with the plants. Usually, we just rinse the plants off pretty thoroughly before planting them. But now my tank is overrun with MTS, which must have come from the store via the plants. We're still trying to add new plants to outcompete some BBA (which is working!). How do I introduce new plants from this store (only one that's not a big box store)? I see all sorts of things on YouTube, like bleach, peroxide, alum, but how safe are they, really, for my fish, and for the plants? Is there a tried and true method?

 

[Byron]

None of these are actually "safe" if by safe one means no harm whatsoever. Rhonda Wilson who authored the monthly planted tank column in TFH for several years always said that anything actually strong enough to kill snails or algae would harm the plants.

These snails are not your enemy, they are your friend. There is good reason the store has them in their plant tanks, the snails eat algae. Not rapidly nor problem algae, but they do help. And they will reproduce so long as you provide food for them. Malaysian Livebearing Snails are the best of the lot, as these get down through every inch of the substrate. They really are your friends in a healthy aquarium.

 

[jaylach]

I agree as to snails being friends. I actually rather like pond/bladder snails but can't keep as my cichlids just eat the beasties.

 

[realgwyneth]

I hear you that the snails are helpful, and I would love to have a few of them to do those tasks in my tank ... but there are suddenly hundreds of them! They're in the sponge inside my AQ filter! I'm worried that they'll soon reproduce to the point that my filter can't keep up. I'm pretty sure I'm not over feeding. I think the tank being dark for so many days when the power went out maybe created ideal conditions for them? (And I didn't feed at all while the power was out.)

 

[Byron]

I hear you that the snails are helpful, and I would love to have a few of them to do those tasks in my tank ... but there are suddenly hundreds of them! They're in the sponge inside my AQ filter! I'm worried that they'll soon reproduce to the point that my filter can't keep up. I'm pretty sure I'm not over feeding. I think the tank being dark for so many days when the power went out maybe created ideal conditions for them? (And I didn't feed at all while the power was out.)

This is probably normal for the Malaysian Livebearing snail, I had the same. I noticed that they would initially reproduce very rapidly, but then settle back to more reasonable levels. I assume (rightly or wrongly) that the initial influx do not find enough food to continue reproducing that rapidly, so things taper off.

You might be surprised how much food they can find.