Snail Eradication

[ezrk]

As most of you know we are getting ready to move this Summer. As part of the move we are considering some tank changes. One possibility is that we might move our fish in our 55g up to a 125g and buy another 55g. We would then use our two 55g in our laundry as our fry/grow-out tanks.

We have a moderate infestation of MTS in basically all our existing tanks. I wonder with moving and acquiring new tanks if we could take the opportunity to eliminate the snails. This would involve some process of clearing out each tank, housing the fish temporarily in either a 55g or the 125g and letting the existing tanks dry out or running them with bleach.

There are a few challenges I see with this:

• can we insure that we don't transfer snails with the fish? Is there some way to insure our fish are "snail free" when moving them to a temporary tank and then back to their home tank?
• This would obviously kill our bio filter. I can think of a couple of ways to deal with that, mostly seeding extra media in a closed loop for the wet-dry filters or sanitizing a single canister and then reseeding it separately for the new tank.
• Is drying and/or bleach good enough to wipe out the MTS? We would only get one shot at it so want to be sure. Is there something else we should do?
• We have one planted tank, I don't think there is any realistic way to insure the plants are snail free except to kill them...any other ideas?

Thanks and any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[verbal]

I think copper is pretty effective at eliminating snails. The downside is it can be hard to be 100% it is all removed, so having inverts down the road might be an issue.

For plants, Michael barber used an alum bath to get rid of snails. Not sure the recommended concentration.


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[ezrk]

Interesting found this:

http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/eliminating-snails

We considered Potassium Permanganate as well...

 

[mchambers]

That's a good article, as are most articles at the website. I think alum or potassium permanganate should work.

For non-planted tanks, bleaching and drying ought to work.

 

[Avatar]

Nuke em til they glow

Why would you use use bleach for snails? Are they carrying Ebola? Sometimes it seems like people just sit around and try and figure out excuses to get out the Chlorox...

The plants will have to be treated to ensure no snails/eggs survive and potassium permanganate has been used as snail-killing dip for decades - doesn't take much. The fish themselves shouldn't be a problem. For the substrate just put it in a bucket, fill it with hot water to heat everything up and then dump the water and refill with boiling water. Or you can just clean it and put it in the oven to bake at low temperature for an hour. Promise they will all die, crawling and unborn alike. Filter media may only be an issue if you're not using a pre-filter and you can't use PP because it causes cell walls to disintegrate. I'd hold back some nice nasty brown water from your filter to re-seed and scald everything else.

Luck.

 

[ezrk]

Why would you use use bleach for snails? Are they carrying Ebola? Sometimes it seems like people just sit around and try and figure out excuses to get out the Chlorox...

Luck.

haha fair point. There are definitely snails in the filters of all tanks, I think they could penetrate pretty much any pre-filter you are likely to use tbh.

What I am thinking for plant-free tanks is something like this:

- move fish to temporary tank
- boil rocks and wood
- boil substrate
- boil or replace filter media
- let tank dry 24-48 hours

The only challenge then is how to cycle this things. I was thinking you could set-up a 20 gallon or something, possibly with buckets as an ersatz wet-dry filter, and fill it with media and a pump. You do this a week or two in advance so the media has a nice strong bacteria colony.

 

[dogofwar]

Just run some sponges on another tank for a couple weeks...

Why all of the effort to eliminate the snails?

Matt

haha fair point. There are definitely snails in the filters of all tanks, I think they could penetrate pretty much any pre-filter you are likely to use tbh.

What I am thinking for plant-free tanks is something like this:

- move fish to temporary tank
- boil rocks and wood
- boil substrate
- boil or replace filter media
- let tank dry 24-48 hours

The only challenge then is how to cycle this things. I was thinking you could set-up a 20 gallon or something, possibly with buckets as an ersatz wet-dry filter, and fill it with media and a pump. You do this a week or two in advance so the media has a nice strong bacteria colony.

 

[Avatar]

Not hard

Just strain some water from your filters into a container and use it to inoculate your media once it's been de-snailed. Really doesn't take long for bacteria to recolonize foam/floss/porous media surfaces if they have something to eat. You could just throw the inoculant into a bucket with all your media and some fish food and by the time you get around to refilling the tanks you should be good to go.