What! Snails?

Hey guys, can anyone identify this snail and is it bad news? I don't want like a thousand snails in 6 months in my tank. I don't mind snails really, they part of the ecology, but don't want an infestation


Thanks...

 

Lookd like nirate snails

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Malaysian trumpet snail, lives in the substrate, eats leftover food and detritus. Nocturnal, if you want to see how many you have switch your light back on a couple of hours after lights out when they'll be out foraging. If you overfeed or neglect tank hygiene, you will literally end up with thousands.

 

Thanks @Jwh, did some research on them as well, shall keep an eye on them. So far I could only spot 2 of them. Don't mind them they actually kind of cute, just hope I can keep the numbers under control...

 

Or you could just buy Assassin Snails from me. They feast on these pests.

 

Wow, thanks @Reedfish, what a good idea, shall keep it mind...

 

If you can see one or two, there are probably one or two hundred hiding in the substrate. To better gauge the population, take a sample of substrate and sift through it. They add significant biomass to an aquarium, so at least you would want to know what you have. Like Reedfish said, you can remove them with zucchini (marrow), lettuce or cucumber used as bait at night, which you remove before dawn the next morning. Don't be tempted to treat the tank with snail poisons, just remove them manually, or if you are really desperate, get assassin snails or a loach, or remove the substrate completely. Where snails are part of natural ecosystems, there are usually parasites and predators, plus food scarcity, that keep their numbers in check. An aquarium is rarely a good approximation of a natural, diverse ecosystem, and is also often over-nutrified. And we also want our livestock and plants to be healthier and longer-lived even than they would be in nature. So I tend to not feel too warm-hearted about my tank being over-run with snails. At the moment I have a problem with small ramshorns all over my one planted tank, and it is a real mission to control them, but the manual zucchini method is bearing fruit. If you move stuff like plants or ornaments between tanks, give them a soak in weak copper sulphate solution (5-10 ppm) for a few hours. That should help avoid a transfer of snails. But beware, some plants (like Vallis) are also sensitive to copper.

 

@RVisser, I'll keep that in mind too thanks...

 

No I don't believe in using poisons to treat anything in my aquariums, but I shall do the cucumber trick to see what crawls out of the woodwork, or substrate in this case. Thanks everyone for all the help, never to old to learn or to long in the hobby to learn...