An Observation about snails

[dogstar74]

I had a strange find here today that I don't know the significance of but I thought that I should publish it and get other's input and ideas about what it means. These are only observations, and so I cannot state any evidence beyond anecdotal so take this for what it's worth.

I have been running a small QT tank (5 gal AGA) with two adult oscellaris clowns in it. They have been in there for about 5 months while I got the money, drive and desire to get their 20 H running again.

Well after about 2 weeks of no water changes, only top off, I would usually have a pretty green layer of algea on the glass. But it would easily come off with a razor and looked like normal algea to me.

The other day, my son was at the LFS with me, and loved the snails! So I decided that since my 20 is just about ready, that I could use the utility of the snails. I Believe they are trochus snails. So we purchased the snails and took them home. And plopped them into the 5 gal QT tank with the clowns. After all, they couldn't add that much bioload could they?

So it's been about 2 weeks now, time again to change the water, but this time, although the glass has the regular contrails from the snails and the glass has been kept rather clearer, The slime I got out of my filters were all kinds of different than my normal algea! Also the shear amounts of this stuff that I have collected over a two week period is staggering! :eek1: These two snails have far more than doubled the output of crap that my two adult clowns have produced!

Now I'm not a Marine biologist, but I wonder, if these little critters actually are bad for our systems, in that they pollute to promote more algea thus ensuring plenty of food to eat! :eek2: I mean, This stuff wasn't like normal algea, and it was really hard to peel off the plastic portions of my filter! It was glued down with almost a slime layer! And this was in portions of the filter the snails cannot access.

Anyway, I am really rethinking the utility of snails. And I wonder if they creat the problem they are purchased to fight? I just wonder if we as hobbiests buy snails to control the algea, then it gets worse, so we get more snails, etc... I'll have to keep an eye on these guys, because I'm getting ready to send the Clowns back to the 20H. But I may take a while getting the snails back in there. They may just have bought a ticket to stay in the QT for life!. Oh well, I'd like to hear your input. Thanks!

Aaron

 

[graveyardworm]

My thoughts- the algae on your glass were uptaking nutrients from the water. Now that you have snails grazing the algae their poo is feeding something else and at the same time you've lost some of the benefit of the algae that used to be there. Snails add to the bioload, and rather than eating what little bit you give them like a fish they eat almost 24/7.

Questions- Do you have a skimmer on the 5 gal? When you cleaned the algae off the glass did you siphon it out?

 

[dogstar74]

I agree, that when you clean out the algea, you clean out the nitrate reduction potential. Actually, I had not thought of that. Perhaps that's another reason not to have snails.

I do not have a skimmer small enough for the 5 gal. It just isn't feasible. I have DIY'd several attempts, none of them stellar in their success, mostly due to enormous amounts of microbubbles.

I always would suction out the sheets of algea when I would clean the tank. It worked really well. I just wonder if these two snails are offsetting the workings of what was running so well. Perhaps I should just get rid of them.

Thank you for thinking out loud with me! I'd like to see this thread keep going!

 

[romunov]

It is up to you to remove the excess nutrients. The snails just convert from one form of diatoms to ammonia, which is then used by another algae (if you're smart, you have a lot of chaeto or some other algae growing somewhere).