Snail Population Explosion

[mattbeau]

This is just a theory but:

we know that snail infestation is directly linked to over feeding.

but maybe its not the food,

when the excess food is broken down excess nutriants are relesed into the water

this plays role into algae problems

abundance of algae become available to snails and they start munching away on the algae and reproducing

I have a snail factory in my six gallon the tank used to be housed in the kitchen, with low light levels and I found it rather difficult to keep the snails brewing as fast as they were in my community

sure they would eat the food but I wasn't seeing the same explosion as I did in the community

I decided to move the tank directly in the light, this sparked an algae bloom and thus a snail population boom

I'm sure that if one has a snail population control problem, they should probably not have an algae problem and vice versa,

I've also noticed a snail population decline in my community tank, as I have been trying to balance out the available nutriants witht the adition of plants co2 injection and stronger lighting, the plants are thriving, the alagae is not really present and the snail population is low (maybe 5)

so perhapse a solution to snail control that isnt invasive is to balence out the available nutrients.

this can be done by introducing consumers of nutrients (plants)
or removing the nutrients through smaller more frequint water changes.

comments or suggestions are always welcome

 

[kenneth_kpe]

yes i agree! im more inclined to think that the snails reproduce more because of the algae ( snails will reproduce faster if food is abundant, and because algae is their food, more algae means more space for snails) i guess a good means of controlling snails would be to control algae too ! (unless you have snails that prefer plants over algae)

i have the same experience actually, with my smaller algae infested tank, snails are reproducing like mad, but in my main tank where algae is under control, snails are not too many,

 

[mattbeau]

alas, the only thing that was nice about having a snail population out of control was the fact that they really did a good job with the algae, the oto's are not doing there job , so I now have a hair algae out break going on, doh, I really really need to pick up some macro and micro nutrients (this portion is for a difefernt thread)

so in a sense I'm gonna miss the little buggers

just a quick question.

do snails stop reproducing at a certain age? I wouldnt mind like 5 or six if they could just behave themselves

 

[prankster705]

They certainly never behave them selves, except when they are too young to reproduce.