Malaysian Trumpet Snails

[ax]

Hi,
There are some MTS in my tank at the moment, they are beneficial because they stir the sand but before I get my axies should I remove them - I cant imagine them being them being good for the insides of the axolotls?
What do you guys think?
Thanks
joe

 

[blackdog]

there is an article some where on this site about "Species Mixing Disasters"

I think what most of them boil down to is -

"If it moves and can fit in an axies mouth, it will end up in there"

To put it in perspective, if we could swallow things on the same scale as an axie, we could swallow a basketball

I'd move the snails

Bren

 

[jclee]

Ditto. I will admit that I leave common pond snails in the tank, and they do get eaten (faster than they can reproduce, believe it or not), but their shells are much thinner than a fully grown MTS snail's shell. (They can grow surprisingly big!) You can stir sand around with your fingers, if you're worried about anaerobic bacterias building up. How deep is your substrate? If it's shallow enough, you may not even need to worry about anaerobic gasses building, and stirring substrates to prevent that.

 

[ax]

Thanks,
I spent an hour today removing as many as I could - they were some really big ones like you say, i'd guess up to an inche long and half an inch wide at the top unfortunately I won't be sble to get em all out I don't think - i'll leaave some algae wafers in overnight so they gather on them hopefully - thanks for the input :happy:
I removed some of the sand as well so i's a bit shallower, hopefully won't get any anaerobic gases, will a stir once a week do?
Cheers guys

 

[twistedfisher]

a great way to remove snails is to put a blanched lettuce leaf in the tank sinking it o the bottom and shut the light off.

Come back in an hour and boom tons of snails all over the leaf.

 

[carsona246]

stirring once a week will insure that there is no anaerobic gas. But I wouldn't worry too much about it. I used to be very concerned about anaerobic gas until I started reading about freshwater deep sand beds(which i still doubt their effectiveness). Most people using freshwater dsb had huge black spots in their substrate, which were anaerobic gas pockets in the sand, and their fish suffered no ill effects.

 

[jclee]

Don't quote me, but I'm pretty sure that with less than three inches of sand, anaerobic gas build-up is unlikely. (I know more about how that works in well-planted fish tanks than in un-planted salamander tanks). A weekly stir should be enough as a precaution.

 

[carsona246]

Don't quote me, but I'm pretty sure that with less than three inches of sand, anaerobic gas build-up is unlikely. (I know more about how that works in well-planted fish tanks than in un-planted salamander tanks). A weekly stir should be enough as a precaution.

I'm pretty sure that's the standard

 

[jclee]

Thanks for the reassurance, Carsona246. I spend too much time second-guessing my memory's ability to recall factual details.

 

[dragonlady]

Did you mean 3cm? 3 cm equals roughly an inch and the norm that I read is less than an inch of sand.

 

[ax]

Thanks, will do!