Cleanup crew too big???

[RudeBoy]

I've found that no matter WHAT I do, I can never get my Nitrates lower than 10ppm. This is excellent to me because until recently, they were at 80ppm and holding steady so I'm not really complaining. BUT, I read a post where someone mentioned that snails crap more than they take in and I started to wonder if this could be my issue. I currently have a pretty big cleanup crew in my 7g nano and before I list it, promise not to flame!


Currently I have about 6 Astreas, 3 Trochus and 4 nassarius snails. I do admit that I have all of them because I tend to feed my Clown everyday and I feared that any uneaten food could really damage my tank. A little help here guys (and gals)... what do you think?

 

[Agu]

If you don't have the food in the tank to support them they'll eventually die off. IMO you have too many and probably should remove some before that happens. I have half that cleanup crew in my 10s and feed twice a day.

 

[natureboy]

I don't think that an animal can make more nutrients than it eats. That just doesn't seem to make sense.

I think the best suggestions for getting your nitrate levels down would be 1) be a little more frugal with your feedings and 2) do larger, more frequent water changes. With a 7 gallon tank, I think it should be easy to up your water changes.

How much are you feeding? How often and how much water do you change? Do you run a skimmer, or carbon-type media?

 

[RudeBoy]

All great suggestions and you're right, the snails shouldn't be about to put out more than they take in. But my thinking was, where is their waste going? Especially if I have too many of them.

I'm currently running a TertraTec PF300 on it... great but very 'clanky'. Too many 'little' things about it that drive me nuts. I just started running the three stage filter in that because the standard filter doesn't really seem to cut it. The carbon falls to the bottom of the filter and it doesn't seem like that would be logical. I could be wrong but I'm trying out some filters called Bio Xstream. If that fails, I'm going to run a scaled down version of the CPR Bak Pak 2R that I made about 3 years ago and ran on my 10g nano. The only draw back to that is having to add a heater to the insdie of my tank.

I feed my clown once a day and I also have a RBTA that I target feed every other day. I do a 1g water change every Friday. I really want to keep the Nassarius snails because they keep sand moving around.

 

[mr pink floyd]

i would take out 2 astrea, they crap alot, the nassarius and cerinths clean up some crap, but the coneheads crap ALOT i have 10 in my 29, might get rid of some and get some cernith and nassarius

 

[RudeBoy]

Jeez, do they crap THAT much??? I never knew that...

 

[natureboy]

Get rid of a few of those cleaners, you just have too many. And I bet if you just changed 2 or 3 gallons every week instead of 1 gallon, you're problem would be much better. A skimmer on a 7 gallon just isn't as cost efective as more water changes. Take a look at Anthony Calfo's Nano , in which he does 100% weekly water changes.

 

[mr pink floyd]

i have 10 astrea now, this weekend im getting 24 more snails, (12 cerinth 12 nassarious)

is this too big, my params are all good, but my new sand baed has some diatoms and brown poopie hehe

 

[surfnvb7]

i really dont think thats too many snails.

what kind of food are you feeding your clown every day? and is the clown the only fish? what species of clown and how big?

i really think the root to your problem is feeding every day, and not enough water changes. 1g isnt really making a difference, but i wouldnt go further than 50% weekly water changes. if you try to do 100% water changes you could trigger a mini cycle. no point in a skimmer on a tank that small. water changes are more effective at removing excess nutrients if you are siphoning excess deterius correctly.

depending on how old your tank is, your sand bed could also be polluted. how deep is the sand bed? 3 nasarius snails (depending on the specific species) IMO wouldn't be enough to stir the sand thorougly. but thats JMO.

the only time i would ever associate with having too many snails, is if they exhausted their food supply and started to die off.

i used to breed snails for a puffer, and there were literally hundreds in only 1-2 gallons with some algae/plants. no filtration, and only natural sunlight, only did water changes weekly, and i never found any nitrates or amonia in the breeding tank. dont remember what species they were, but they were very easy to breed.

JMHO