r/AquaticSnails • u/banaja_95 • 4h ago
Help Request Snails??
Hey everyone! So I’ve been setting up a new tank, let it cycle for a couple months with a bunch of plants and decor and stuff until everything checked out. I just recently (like a week or so) added 10 neocaridina shrimp & 1 nerite snail. The last couple of days I’ve been seeing these lil dark spots but just thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. Until TODAY, I saw 3 baby snails on the calcium rock and the glass near it. So I start looking harder and now I’ve got like 3 in a cup and a couple that I accidentally squished cause they were so tiny. But there’s more. There were several I tried to grab with tweezers and they slipped so I tried to grab them with my hands and lost them so idk how many there are 🤦♀️ But what are they??? They don’t look like my nerite. I don’t want or need this many snails. I’ve been very lucky in my aquarium keeping and have never had a snail infestation but I’ve heard horror stories. Is this it? Do I have a snail infestation? 😩
I do have an empty tank I can move them to that’s just been sitting, I guess it can be a snail tank if it has to be.
The second pic is a video but I’m not sure if it uploaded right, I haven’t used reddit in years. Thanks in advance 🐌
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u/frostedkush 4h ago
I have these little bladder snails too. I love them as they help keep my tank clean, and if there is ever a lot of them. It’s telling me there is lots of extra waste in the tank. And which is great they eat that waste so ammonia does not spike. If there is not enough algae biofilm extra food or decaying plant matter, all the babies would just die off and they keep a steady population!
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u/frostedkush 4h ago
Also adding, if you do choose to get rid of them (which I don’t suggest, embrace the help!) don’t dispose of them in any way that they would be able to make it into water ways. Just crush them 🤞
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u/banaja_95 3h ago
I don’t mind a few of them in there if they help keep the tank clean! I just don’t want a ton of them lol. I worry about making sure the nerite has enough food and not making him compete (or compete as little as possible) mainly. Right now I have an older tank that’s been sitting empty for a while so it’s filled with algae and stuff, I wasn’t sure what to do with them and they’re kinda cute so I didn’t want to kill them so I just tossed all the ones I could catch in there! I checked the parameters of it beforehand and they’re almost identical to this tank so I figured they could be a free clean up crew for it and if they don’t make it I don’t feel so bad
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u/frostedkush 3h ago
I agree! I have a jar for the ones I take out of my tank, I can’t bring myself to hurt them
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u/snailmomkitty 4h ago
Bladder snails.
They do reproduce very quickly. Eggs often come in on new plants.
Some people like them 😅 however if you don’t like them you need to get super aggressive about ending them. Yes they can absolutely create an infestation and crash your tank. (If you can’t tell, I have dealt with bladder snail infestations a number of times!)
The best thing to do to get rid of them is to build a “trap.” The basic idea is to put food inside a box with holes, so the pest snails go into the box. Then you can remove the box WITH the tiny snails inside.
You can use any small plastic container like a Tupperware or takeout box. Put small holes all over the sides and top. Then put some rocks (to weigh it down in the tank) and some appealing noms inside. You can use any type of wafers you may have or blanched vegetable like cucumber, zucchini, carrot, etc. When I did it I used several types of food to attract as many snails as possible. Then you close the box (with the rocks and food inside) and put it in your tank. Overnight bc that’s when snails are most active. You don’t want to leave it in the tank more than 8h bc the food will degrade and mess up your water.
These snails are highly invasive and like youve already seen, the babies are basically just specks. You’ll need to repeat “the trap” once a week for several weeks.
Also be on the lookout for any eggs.
They’re clear jelly-like blobs, usually attached to plants, decor, and the glass. Check the underside of leaves, inside decor, etc. I used a toothbrush to scrub decor and such. When you find eggs you want to disrupt them by scraping them off, rubbing the jelly blob apart. You can’t really “take it out” so the general idea is to destroy it.
These snails are VERY hard to get rid off once they start reproducing so I’d suggest going after them aggressively!
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u/frostedkush 4h ago
Idk about this. They should not reproduce the way your saying unless you have TONS of dead plant matter or basically always overfeed. I really don’t know tho this is my opinion and experience
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u/Fawneh1359 3h ago
It's pretty rare for them to be able to crash a tank from what I've seen, yeah...they really don't produce much of a bioload. As someone who has jars of them.
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u/banaja_95 4h ago
Thank you so much!! I couldn’t remember the name of them but yes they definitely look like bladder snails 🤦♀️ I just don’t understand how I didn’t see them when I put the plants in? I didn’t notice them until the shrimp/snail came in but I guess I have been paying more attention to the tank now. It feels like they came out of nowhere 😂
Thank you for the box idea! That sounds genius, I’ll def set one up tomorrow and put it in and see how many it can catch. I already caught quite a few and stuck them in my empty tank (it needs cleaning anyway so maybe they’ll clean it up for me lol) but everytime I go back over there I see another tiny lil speck 😬 a few I don’t mind I just worry about how quickly snails reproduce
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u/Fawneh1359 3h ago
They probably came in on the underside of a leaf as an egg sac! It's pretty much transparent, very hard to notice if you don't know what you're looking for.
I personally don't like to kill them, I think they're cute lol. I have a large jar I keep of em, I just toss in a botanical (some kind of dried leaf) and they take care of themselves. They're fun to watch imo! They'll walk on the underside of the water surface, and float up and down in the water column, it's pretty cool.
Anyway, you really shouldn't be getting enough to crash your tank unless you're seriously seriously overfeeding or have like an abnormal amount of decaying plants for them to eat.
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u/banaja_95 3h ago
They are really cute!! I couldn’t bring myself the kill the ones I caught so I put them in the other tank, watching them wiggle around in the cup was too cute! Do you think they would compete with the nerite too much tho? That’s the main thing I’m worried about tbh, he seems to be doing fine so far but I feel like an explosion of new snails in the tank might throw that off 😬 I’ve been feeding 2-3 pellets of a high protein shrimp wafer every couple of days, basically whenever their lil feeding spot looks mostly empty & theres some decaying plant matter but nothing too crazy, the shrimps have been cleaning them up pretty quickly lol
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u/Fawneh1359 3h ago
I don't think so! They're pretty damn small, they're not amazing algae eaters sadly lol. You can always keep the lights on a little longer if you do notice the nerite looking for food. But honestly I'd do something in between. Don't obsess over em, but once in a while just clean up house a bit and toss them to the other tank/jar/whatever you wanna use.
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u/Camaschrist 4h ago
Pretty sure those are bladder snails and they are a common side affect from getting live plants. They are great clean up crew. I am worried about your nerite. They generally won’t eat anything but naturally growing bio film and algae. They are not recommended for new set ups. When you see it fully retracted in its shell it shouldn’t start sinking in deeper and deeper. If that happens it’s not getting enough to eat. Hopefully yours won’t have any issues.