Should I Worry About Pond Snails

[chrisjd]

I am currently fishless cycling my first tank and it’s going very slowly at the moment (I’ve seen ammonia go down but only slowly and not gone below 1ppm since I started adding it). I’ve added some plants to the tank add forgot to rinse them beforehand so now I have snails as well, I think they are pond snails.

When I first saw them I looked into what I could do to get rid of them but since I want to eventually have shrimp in the tank I don’t want to add anything with copper in it, or anything that could harm shrimp at a later stage. I thought perhaps they wouldn’t survive high levels of ammonia during fishless cycling anyway.

It's been two weeks since I first spotted a snail and by now I’ve decided I don’t mind them much anyway. I’ve read mixed things on the internet about them eating plants, but from what I’ve seen they only eat the algae off of plants and actually help plant growth. I don’t mind the look of them either as they don't look like normal snails and you can see them eating the algae of the glass and they look kind of cute I guess. It's something to watch in an otherwise empty tank anyway.

My only worry now is that I can see lots of snail eggs over the plants and I’m worried that as my cycle is taking so long that by the time it’s finished I’ll be overrun with them. So what is everyone else’s experience with them, should I be trying to stop them if possible now or just leave them be?

 

[the_lock_man]

If you're ok with them, then leave them. If the population explodes, once you get fish in the tank, it'll be because you're overfeeding, so it's quite a good alert system.

 

[Aqua Tom]

If you are doing a fishless cycle then dont worry too much as the excess ammonia will probably kill the eggs or babies. To clear the adults weigh down a piece of lettuce in the tank, in the morning it will be covered in snails, remove & dispose, then use a new piece of lettuce. Do this three times or more & you will make a serious dent in the population.

Tom