Suddenly snails in my aquarium!

R

Rune

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Okay, so I had my aquarium set up for a couple of months now, waiting for the beneficial bacteria to build up and suddenly today I found a buttload of snails floating in my tank! I don't have any axolotls YET because I'm going to be moving soon, and I figured that would be less stress on them.

Are they harmful, how did they get there, and what should I do?!
 
Hi, I too found this a huge problem in my pyro tank. 100's of em, so I did a bit of research and got myself 5 assassin snails, snail eating snails, this was about 3 months ago, I now have no unwanted snails, and the assins are banded yellow/black like bumble bees. But I rarely see them now as they tend to hide in the sand.
Here's a link
http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=111448057801

2f13da06041ebb61be7fb53689e01c9a.jpg



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P.s don't worry they are fine in cold water - mine went dormant for a few days but this was natural as they adapted and are now thriving ?


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I keep snails in all my freshwater tanks. They are harmless and make a good clean up crew, since they eat leftovers and detritus. Plus I think they're kind of cute. I keep mostly ramshorn snails, but I have Malaysian trumpet snails in a couple fish tanks- not with axolotls, though. I worry the sharp shell could do damage if consumed. I actually have the same concern with the assassin snails. The shell looks thick and pointy. I've never kept them, so maybe the shell is softer than it looks, but I would be somewhat cautious with them if your axies show interest in eating snails. My axie tank never has any large adult ramshorn snails, which suggests they all get eaten before they reach full size, so I know they eat the snails even though I never see them do it.
 
I don't have my axolotls yet, and I think my live plants are dead ._. (not enough sunlight I think...) but I have no idea where they came from (either the plants or the sand would be my best bet) but I want to stop them before they get out of control. I'm moving next week so that means getting rid of a lot of water (them included) but I'm worried there'll be lots of eggs left over. I'm not sure if they're like dead or not? They just sort of float around. They're almost all black, shell included.
 
Maybe boil the substrate? But that might get rid of a lot of your good bacteria... :/ That's the only thing I could think would ensure there are no eggs surviving.
 
If you put live plants in your tank, that is a sure bet! The tiny babies or a pod of eggs were likely attached to a leaf. If you got sand from another established tank, that is possible as well. But, if you put in new sand from a dry bag, they didn't come in that.

If you clean everything in the tank, you will have to start over from scratch with your cycle. If it were me, I would not take any drastic action. I would siphon out all I could see, then let the ammonia and nitrate spikes in the cycling process take care of them. Most will likely die in this process as they need pretty good tank conditions to live.
 
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