What Snail Is This?

[Aviici]

Hi, I've noticed there's a couple of these snails in my smaller planted tank - I'm not sure what type they are, and if they eat plants or not? Just saw the photograph of this little guy on another thread, he's exactly the same as the snails I have!
 

 
 
Edit: also, thought I'd mention I've recently added assassin snails to the tank, so this snails days are probably numbered, or are they?

 

[LiamGoodaire]

Pest snails probably arrived with with plants from your LFS
Someone will give you the proper name on here
Asassin snails will get rid of them they are awesome at it! I think they look quite cool too!

 

[Aviici]

Hmm, I hope they get rid of them quickly!
I'm going to start taking cuttings from the plants and putting some in my Roma 200, so don't want any eggs/snails to transfer over to my new tank. Could be tragic if they're plant eaters, if they're not then I can let them live in the tank.

 

[LiamGoodaire]

Well watch out for eggs because the snails spawn at a ridiculous rate! If it was me I'd wait for the assasin snails to clear the tank first

 

[David J]

Hi

I have some of these in my new tank after adding live plants. I have at least 8 but maybe more. I think they are pond snails aka tadpole snails.

When I first to noticed them I was worried that they would overrun the tank and eat the plants. After a couple of weeks I haven't noticed the number increasing and notice no problem with my plants. After much reading about them I found that over feeding the fish will result in prolific breeding of the snail so I cut my feeding down to once daily instead of twice. When I was doing it twice a day there was always a lot of extra flake on the sand but now there's hardly any.

I decided I'm not going to worry about them unless the numbers go up too high. They eat algae off the glass and I've noticed them on my bogwood.

David

 

[Aviici]

Cheers David, glad to hear they're not too bad
 
I only feed once a day, 6 days a week too, so hopefully they're just some hatchlings off of eggs on a live plant! Does anyone know if cories would eat small snails at all? I've knocked a snail off the glass while cutting plants and they were very interested, blowing it round the sand but they didn't manage to get it.

 

[David J]

I don't think corys will eat snails unless you squish the shell. There are some fish that will hunt snails and deal with them without any help but all other fish will eat the snail but you need to deal with the shell first.

 

[This Old Spouse]

Some loaches will eat snails. As mentioned, too much feeding will exacerbate the snail problem. Assassin snails (I have lots in my tanks) will eventually eat them but the pest snails have to be big enough for the assassins to eat them. Just manage the food and you should be fine.