Id These Snails Please

[Curiosity101]

I was idly looking through at the shells etc in the bottom of the fish bag (accidently netted whilst the fish shop guy caught my gouramis), and I suddenly noticed 2 of the shells had inhabitants.
I presume they are freshwater snails, so what are they?

 

[three-fingers]

Regular MTS, Melanoides tuberculata .

 

[Amerce]

Yup Malaysian trumpet snails.

 

[Curiosity101]

Prolific breeders? I wasn't going to kill them but I just had a quick read and frankly I'm not putting them in if they're going to take over the tank. I feel bad killing the little guys...but...

 

[pippoodle]

they're brilliant if you have sand in your tanks
they burrow and stir it up
they are easy to remove when they grow and you can always sell them on ebay or here if you get too many

 

[TylerFerretLord]

Even if they explode in number you won't see much of them, they like to hide in the substrate during the day unless there's food out.

 

[grasshopper_green]

I disagree that you won't see much of them. There were times that I got completely disgusted to see the entire surface of my gravel covered in snails.
I'd be similarly disgusted late at night when they'd crawl up the glass and the front glass of my tanks was almost completely covered in snails.
My solution was Botia kubotai.
I love my loaches - they're beautful, peaceful, and do not harm plants or shrimp.
Now, I have zero mts. Once in a while, I'll ask for some extra mts at the lfs. I put mts in the tank, but the loaches make get rid of them quickly..

 

[pippoodle]

I disagree that you won't see much of them. There were times that I got completely disgusted to see the entire surface of my gravel covered in snails.
I'd be similarly disgusted late at night when they'd crawl up the glass and the front glass of my tanks was almost completely covered in snails.
My solution was Botia kubotai.
I love my loaches - they're beautful, peaceful, and do not harm plants or shrimp.
Now, I have zero mts. Once in a while, I'll ask for some extra mts at the lfs. I put mts in the tank, but the loaches make get rid of them quickly..

If you had that many mts you were overfeeding

 

[three-fingers]

Yep, agree with pippoodle.

MTS wont breed to the point where they are all over the tank, by nature they mainly stay in the substrate during the day.

They do however, migrate to the surface when there are issues with water chemistry (you often notice this in LFS tanks that are being treated with medication or have cloudy water).

That comined with the fact that they have to oby the laws of physics - they cant grow and reproduce unless there is enough organic matter lying around for them to do so, if you had a huge amount of them and didnt want them, this indicates you should be cleaning the tank out far more often.

 

[~T~]

I have a ton of MTS and I love them. I wouldnt be without them in my tanks now.

 

[Amunet]

We have a TON of MTS in our 29gal tank.
So much so that they cover the top of the substrate lol.
Don't have a problem with Blue green algae starting in the gravel any longer though lol
I do overfeed that tank though, so it's my fault their numbers grew so much.
We have some in our other tanks as well.
In the betta tank, used to have a bunch even though I never overfed that tank. Think they may have been feeding on the algae that got bad in it.
In both the 10gals... they never got really bad.
And in the 125, they're not bad in it either. Just saw some tiny ones the other night on the tank wall so there may be more than I'm seeing in there. We have clown loaches in the tank though, so hoping they will keep the trumpet snail numbers down.