Where The Hell Did The Snail Come From

[damovts]

Ok I have a 90 litre tank with:
female fighter fish
neons
silvertips
bleeding hearts
herlequins
peppered corys

this morning i noticed there is a very small snail in the tank... where the hell could he have come from??? also will any of these fish kill him?

 

[OldMan47]

It probably came in as a hitchhiker on a plant. It may have only been eggs at the time you brought in the plant. You don't have anything in your list that I recognize as a snail eater but I'm not sure about that. As long as you don't overfeed your tank, the snail population shouldn't get out of control.

 

[SJ2K]

Destroy it while you still can.

 

[darklady]

Ok I have a 90 litre tank with:
female fighter fish
neons
silvertips
bleeding hearts
herlequins
peppered corys

this morning i noticed there is a very small snail in the tank... where the hell could he have come from??? also will any of these fish kill him?

one of the first mistakes i made was introducing new plants without washing them first. i ended up with snail eggs in my tank as they were attatched to the plant leaves. now i wash them thoroughly and i also quarantine any new plant for 48 hours and watch closely to ensure that i dont have the same problem again.

hey we all make mistakes but it is what we learn from them that matters

 

[waterdrop]

There are some long threads the search engine can find on TFF about various dunking and snail-watch techniques. As far as I know there is no fool-proof solution.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[manc37]

yep quite possible it came off a plant

 

[vinylman]

Not the worst thing in the world to have in your tank, of course. What shape is it?. If it's shaped like an ice cream cone, it's probably a Malaysian Trumpet Snail. They actually do a great job of keeping your gravel/sand turned over. If you find you have too many, just cut down on feeding for a day or two, or wait until about ten minutes after lights out and just pick the ones off the glass to get rid of.

 

[Corleone]

Yeah, compare it to the snails in the snail species thread in the invertebrates forum. Anything that doesn't destroy healthy plants or reproduce very quickly (pond snails, IMO, are worth killing early, most others are worth keeping). Most snail populations are reasonably easy to control, and make a better cleanup crew than fish sold for the job. They tend to reproduce to fit the food available, so they make a nice "scaling" cleanup crew. Personally, I've picked up trumpet and ramshorn snails and don't have anything bad to say about either one.

You might get a lot of them early on if there's any organic matter accumulated in the gravel, but after a while the population will only keep growing if you're overfeeding. When there are too many, leave a piece of lettuce or cucumber in the tank overnight and pull it out early in the morning, it'll be crawling with snails.

 

[damovts]

ok thanks guys