Snail Problem

[nwestwood]

Now that my system is about 4 months old, I'm seeing baby snails pop up. Especially in the DWC tank and sump tank. I've been manually smashing the small ones in an attempt to kill them before the reproduce and lay eggs, but not sure I can keep up.

What kind of common (not regulated) fish eat snails? Or what other ways are there to get rid of them, short of complete sterilization?

[GaryD]

Hi,

Are they small white snails?

GaryD

[Tsaphah]

If the temperature in your sump is warm enough, you could look at placing about 3 Yoyo Loaches (scientific name is Botia lohachata, and you often see them sold as Lohachata Loaches). They are partialy nocturnal, like a place to hide and dont usually bother other fish. You could always take them out during winter and keep them in an indoor aquarium. Will eat normal floating flake fish food.
Be warned though, they are jumpers and escape artists.

[nwestwood]

Right now they are small brown snails. I know where they came from, I used water from another system and they have snails, they grow to 1/2-1 inch size (12-25 mm). They lay a slimmy clear patch of eggs when they mature. I don't have many tiny ones at present, but one is to many and when there is one, thousands will come.

I'll need to put preditors in my sump tank and the DWC tank. The water temp is kept above 67 degrees (19C). The DWC tank will have dangling roots, and the snails are often on the bottom of the foam boards (they are they easy ones to smash).

[Ravnis]

redear sunfish AKA shell crackers are well known for eating snails , I have them in my sump for that very reason. Just start with 1 or 2 , because they dont take artificial feed well and will probably eat themselves out of a job. It's a cousin of bluegill and native to the US. However , not all fish regulations make logical sense, so double check that its legal.

[nwestwood]

I'll check into the sunfish. I've moved a few of my starter goldfish that were in the sump to the DWC tank. I'm not seeing any snails in the sump, so maybe the goldfish eat all the eggs and small snails before they grow. I'll watch and see if the snail eggs disappear over time, if so, then the goldfish may be enough also. Does anyone know if Goldfish will eat the roots off the lettuce? I know that Koi will browse on algea and moss, but will goldfish eat roots?

[Outbackozzie]

Yes they will if hungry.

[Bidadisndat]

They will: I tried growing a lettuce on a raft in the aquarium, but it got shredded from beneath. :(
......Bid...

[nwestwood]

The goldfish have cleared out the small snails. There are still some eggs. I've started feeding them every other day to keep them from browsing on the plants to much, but will continue to see what happens, so far the plants havent' suffered.

[DaveOponic]

My snail problem was tiny snails in the growbeds. The cone shaped snails had probably found their way into the GB's from the water via Water Hyacinth I used to put in the tank to feed the Tilapia.

I tried manually crushing them for weeks then one evening noticed that there were many more of them each time the growbeds flooded. It seemed these snails either didn't like the water or were just floating to the top.

Anyway over the past couple of weeks we have had very hot conditions here in Borneo and for some reason the growbeds haven't been flooding as high. There are always dry clayballs on the top few cm's and no sign of any snails. So hopefully, snails have reached the end of their life cycle, drowned or dried up without need for emtying growbeds. Veges are looking much healthier without being munched by thousands of tiny snails.

... and as far as underwater snails go...... I keep two tortoises in one of the tanks. I fed a snail (land based) to them this morning and they munched it up quickly... so you might try introducing a small tortoise/turtle to your fishtank.

They also help to stir up the poo and keep it from collecting on the bottom of the tank as their webbed feet really stir up the dirt on the tank bottom.

Dave

[hellbent]

ive been wondering if having a turtle in the system is a bad thing, arent you worried about the salmonella?

i too got some snails with my water hyacinth, i picked them all out and put them into my turtle tank, hoping they would help clean my tank. instead my turtle got a fat meal.

[DaveOponic]

I hadn't really thought about salmonella. I must research this. Do turtles have salmonella or is it only when they are fed meat etc?

My turtles eat the same pellets I feed the Tilapia and seem to co-exist quite peacefully in the same tank even though they are faster at getting the pellets than the fish, the fish now eat the bits they drop to the bottom of the tank.

Having the turtles seems to help keep the water clear as they are always paddling around on the bottom and stirring up the poo so it gets pumped out.

Anyone else keeping turtles/tortoises with fish?

By the way, I don't eat any fish from the turtle tank. All the fish we eat come from a tank that has only Tilapia and Barramundi.

[poohbear]

I hadn't really thought about salmonella. I must research this. Do turtles have salmonella or is it only when they are fed meat etc?

My turtles eat the same pellets I feed the Tilapia and seem to co-exist quite peacefully in the same tank even though they are faster at getting the pellets than the fish, the fish now eat the bits they drop to the bottom of the tank.

Having the turtles seems to help keep the water clear as they are always paddling around on the bottom and stirring up the poo so it gets pumped out.

Anyone else keeping turtles/tortoises with fish?

By the way, I don't eat any fish from the turtle tank. All the fish we eat come from a tank that has only Tilapia and Barramundi.

My understanding from what I've read online before is that turtles do carry semonella when they are young. Suppositly pet shops sell them when they are a bit larger to reduce the semonella risk. This is something I'll have to relook into as well but I don't think I'll be having a turtle in there personally.

About those cone shaped snails in the substrate. They sound very much like Malaysian Trumpet Snails. They can be a pro/con. In an aquarium it's 50-50 in that they do aerate the substrate by digging in and out of them to find food. However if they die and are in the substrate they could raise the calcium levels in the water due to them liking higher pH water for their shells. They normally like to stay in the substrate IIRC thus why you see them in your substrate.

[poohbear]

Now that my system is about 4 months old, I'm seeing baby snails pop up. Especially in the DWC tank and sump tank. I've been manually smashing the small ones in an attempt to kill them before the reproduce and lay eggs, but not sure I can keep up.

What kind of common (not regulated) fish eat snails? Or what other ways are there to get rid of them, short of complete sterilization?

If you have another snail outbreak some things you could consider pending the water temps. As someone mentioned already the loaches love snails but they do live a long time so unless you can keep a population to feed them you may want to sell the loach later.

Pending the water temps and the water spacing you have a dwarf puffer fish could work. In Canada at the LFS they are ~$3-4.99/ea. They are incredibly cute and will follow your finger around. They love snails and can hold their own against other fish. A warning tho they can be aggressive so if you're keeping it in DWC tank with the snails and nothing else in there you should have no problems as they are carnivores. They are called a dwarf puffer (AKA pea puffer) because they grow to 1in max. They can assasult and win against full adult ramhorn snails about half their size and can give snails a beating up to their full body size. Any baby snails will be snatched up in the tank. However if there are snail eggs the pea puffer won't attack them till they hatch. Check youtube for some videos of this cute guy. There is one video where this pea puffer inhaled an adult ramhorn snail. O_o;;

Just word to the wise it's highly recommended to have 1 pea puffer per 5gal of water space. Anything else and they get aggressive on each other when they see each other so if the lettuce roots are long it'll help break up their line of sight and keep the fighting down. Very cute fight to have if you see them in the LFS check them out.

Another livestock thing you can get is called an 'assassin snail' as the name implies they will hunt down snails and consume them. They are strictly to my knowledge meat eaters. A pair or trio of them will keep the snail population down to zero eventually. They tend to hunt and eat one day then stop hunting then resume a day or two later. If your snail problem is that bad 1-2 pea puffers would keep it interesting while self managing the snail problems. Just one pea puffer will mean you don't have to worry about feeding it as it'll always have some snails afteri t eats off some.

Just a thought there. Also the snails and pea puffer add fert the tank. Pea puffers are messy eaters and IIRC polluters as well but not as much as the goldies.

[DaveOponic]

Thanks for this info. PB. I will have to do some more research on the tiny snails. they are still in my GB's but appearing less at the surface. No snails evident in the water though. Main concern is that they do graze on some plants at times. They are showing no interest in broccoli but have decimated any italian spinach or pak choy I have grown in the past.


Dave

[poohbear]

Thanks for this info. PB. I will have to do some more research on the tiny snails. they are still in my GB's but appearing less at the surface. No snails evident in the water though. Main concern is that they do graze on some plants at times. They are showing no interest in broccoli but have decimated any italian spinach or pak choy I have grown in the past.


Dave

Ok, they're in the growbed. Pluck a few and check online on that shape of them. As far as I know copper is lethal to shrimp and snails in large doses. Trace amounts IIRC will effect them but may not effect them enough to die. Do you have any idea how the snails ended up there?

I know from aquarium keeping and in another forum that the 20:1 bleach:water dips and soaks for ~1-3 mins aids in killing off most algae/snails when you buy aquarium plants in the stores. Pretty much everyone has bleach at home.

You may want to obtain some copper and slowly dose the little by little daily while checking for any movement by the snails. I do know to some degree that plants do need some copper elements. Not sure what the copper effects on the plant in terms of growth.

There are various other aquairium products to treat snails but I'm not sure if they are safe for your edible crops in terms of chemicals or such passing up the roots and stored in the plants. I'm thinking the copper is safe because I've seen it in some water soluable synthethic power mixes for house/garden/crop plants with other trace elements in there.

You could experiment with some of the plants and see how they react to a diluted bleach dip and isolate each plant you experiment with and see if they can recover back. I would say 1-2mins is the soak time while giving it a little aggitation once or twice to make sure the liquid is coating all the stems/roots thta the original growbed water level touched.

If all the crops survive then save as much clean biological coated items (tank gravel, filter, decorations, etc) and check them for snails and if you want to be real clean then bleach the whole system but safe the filter if it's good unless you got another filter form another tank that is clean and safe to help seed the bleached out tank when you're down cleaning it.

If you bleach the tank you're pretty sure the tank's likely going to be 95-100% clean but at the risk of having to fully cycle the tnak again if you don't have a backup plan like having a wokring filter in another unit that's been running for some time as your emergency backup.

[DaveOponic]

Thanks PB. Good advice. The plants in the growbed are finished now and I have had it empty for a wekk or two but still FT water circulating. I will disconnect the growbeds one at a time and flush them with pool chlorine and then leave them a week or so and flush it all through. I have just cleaned out a smaller gravel and clay ball grow bed and it wasn't much fun. It was fool of pumpkin roots and had become very stinky.

What I learned was the difference having aswirl filter makes. There was hardly any sediment or gunk in the bottom of the growbed except for roots etc. There were also quite a few carcasses of rather large beetles that had burrowed into the gravel, presumably to eat the roots. I wondered whether they drowned or just got stuck in the gravel. As it's flood and drain they may have burrowed in when the water was full and then got stuck or sucked further under when the water drained.

Anyway, cleaned gravel and clay and I have now planted some baby spinach seedlings and installed a new sunshade over the GB's and relocated them.

PS. After mowing the lawn here I often see some large snails grazing - I think they may be African snails. They are enormous - about 6 inches across the shell.

Dave

[GaryD]

Hi Dave,

I hope you can rid yourself of the snails.

I've seen a system infested with small white snails to the point where they had to be removed from the pump every day.....otherwise they'd jam it.

UVI use a fish (called the redear sunfish -shellcrackers...I think) to deal with snails in their grow troughs.

I think you're on the right track with the chlorine disinfection.

Gary

[poohbear]

Dave,

If they're eating the spinish then see if you can save some spinish and lettuce in the fridge and use thta as bait to help remove as much as possible.

Lay down some of the spinish/lettuce or zucchini (probably go with the spin/let first) leaves/slices on the growbed then check often for any snails then pluck them off. It's a way people have done this with fish tanks for deco fish tanks to lure/bait the snails for removal. However pending the water temps and my personal experience with ramhorn snails with my deco fish tanks and research you'd want to give it 1-2 months of constant upkeep on this because snail eggs can take ~2 weeks to hatch then about another 1-2 weeks before you'll likely see the tiny snails given the grow bed camoflauges them.

I'm factoring 2 hatchings here with the 2 months thing if you got the breeding juvi/adults out. Best is if you're not seeing any more snails after 3 months with this method there is a good chance you've removed all the snails.

I'm not sure how large your tank system is as I've not backread yet at this time or if you mentioned it. You could on the side while doing this build a DIY canister filter or buy some used AquaClear filters and pack it full of foam and run it 24/7 with the filter intakes covered up so no snails make it up the filter tube into the bio media. That way you can have a backup biological filter cultured in those fish takn filters or DIY so if/when you decide it's better to be on the safe side to nuke the whole take by removing all the plants out and just bleaching it and running the bleach water and pump for hours to make sure the system is sterile you can take the DIY canister or fish tank filters you got that have cycled or half cycled so when you remove all the bleach from the system you can use those filters or DIY canister to jump start the system with fish in it without having a bad cycling crash till all the cultures form again in the growbed then you can remove the filters and store them somewhere safe as a backup.

I recommend used Aquaclear filters because they are well known for their space in the filter for easy mix/match stuffing of whatever you want in there to customize for biomedia or such other then buying the Aquaclear filter media stuff you can put your own easy. Also used ones are cheap as the housing hardly ever breaks and the motor may be at half life when you buy it off someone but it's a good backup plan and for cheap.


Gary,

What does copper do to the plants and what if you have too much what signs and on the plants will you see? Can the plants recover from too much copper? I only know of copper that can kill snails IIRC but you'll have to have a 2-3 high dose in the tank to wipe out the snail population. This knowledge is transfered from normal ornamental fish keeping that IIRC have read online over time.

[GaryD]

Hi,


What does copper do to the plants and what if you have too much what signs and on the plants will you see? Can the plants recover from too much copper? I only know of copper that can kill snails IIRC but you'll have to have a 2-3 high dose in the tank to wipe out the snail population. This knowledge is transfered from normal ornamental fish keeping that IIRC have read online over time.
I'm under the impression that copper is bad for fish.......so much so that I've often read that copper should not be used in contact with fish tank water (copper pipes, fittings, etc).

Gary

[poohbear]

Gary,

Just found this (http://www.fishlore.com/fishforum/freshwater-tank-equipment/14776-copper-coated-zinc-fish-tank-substrate.html). Apparently someone found the copper danger level for each aquatic life range.

Well with pipes and fittings I can understand that being always in the water thus the leeching of the copper into the water is constant then, then manually dosing the tank with copper to solve a problem then slowly remove the copper via water changes and using that water change water into soil crops so you don't waste the water. IIRC if you buy activated charcoal in bulk and then filter the water through the charcoal filter the activated charcoal will remove most if not all the copper out of the tank then in a few days.

Normally dosing wiht copper in deco fish tanks is to treat some problems you're having then remove the copper from the water afterwards with water changes and other filtering methods.

http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/snail/coppersnail.php

"Vertebrates, like fish, are much more resistant to moderate concentrations of copper ions than invertebrates like snails. Snails are extremely sensitive to copper sulfate. In fact, concentrations as low as 0.01 % kill all the snails present in any body of water in less than two hours. Moreover, recent research carried out by the National Warmwater Aquaculture Center in Stoneville, MS, showed that concentrations of up to five parts per million (5 ppm) of copper sulfate would not kill catfish in outdoor ponds while killing more than 90% of the snail Bolbophorus sp. These concentrations, however, are much too high for a typical freshwater aquarium and should not be used."

I'm still reading the article there. I guess figure out how much 0.01% is in your tank size and go to the drug store and get an eye dropper or ask for a sryinge (over here that syringe is about 50cents CDN each) in veroius sizes so you can accurately dose the tank.

[GaryD]

Hi Pooh Bear,

There are many treatments that might be used on decorative fish that ought not be used on food fish.

Aside from salt, most aquaponicists don't use much of anything on their fish.......which is one of the things that I find attractive about the whole idea.

Gary

[poohbear]

Hi Pooh Bear,

There are many treatments that might be used on decorative fish that ought not be used on food fish.

Aside from salt, most aquaponicists don't use much of anything on their fish.......which is one of the things that I find attractive about the whole idea.

Gary

Gary,

I thoguht copper would be ok in small doses to rid the snail problem and IIRC plants need the copper as well albiet not a large dose thus why I was thinking copper would have probably been the only thing useable.

[nwestwood]

I solved my slug problem in the grow beds. I sprinkled builders lime (the same that I use to buffer ph up) all over the surface of the grow beds, especially around the base of the plants. No more slugs. The goldfish and koi in the DWC and Sump tank take care of the snails.

[poohbear]

I solved my slug problem in the grow beds. I sprinkled builders lime (the same that I use to buffer ph up) all over the surface of the grow beds, especially around the base of the plants. No more slugs. The goldfish and koi in the DWC and Sump tank take care of the snails.

Now I'm curiousi f that lime trick works for soil based plants by having that around the top of the soil area.