@@Apistoleon all I can remember as it was back in the 70,s . He used cooking salt not table salt and just scooped 2-3 table spoons in a bucket then rinsed in another bucket of fresh water. Table salt has or did have iodine in it. Even back then everything came lead weighted and bunched wrapped in wet newspaper and my job was to plant all the new clean stock in 2 x 4’ tanks twice a week after school.🥳
Stupid question, but does it also handle the eggs? I understand the mechanics of snails dying to salt, and im assuming the eggs are largely water too but wanna be sure lol
@@ajet8284 I honestly don’t know but I do know there were no snails hatching out in my dad’s 2 x 4’ plant display tanks that I had to plant out for selling on twice a week. So the salt must have killed them too.
Ramshorn snails are never a problem unless they are out-competing some other small detritivore species. Unless your over feeding, their population will not get out of control, same with pond snails. I've found ramshorns do a pretty good job of keeping the glass free of algae, they love to eat dead foliage, and they add a pop of color.
I have them because it's claimed that they don't eat healthy leaves. Don't believe that. They are laying waste to my plants. They eat healthy leaves and new growth.
@@hzpz-ur1qe In my 8 aquariums I haven't had an issue in over 2 years. The only "problem" I've had is their population fluctuating based on the amount of algae available for them to graze on.
I keep them as a food source for Guppies and shrimp. I just squash them against the glass and fish go crazy for them. Also they are a good way to understand if you are feeding too much. If you are getting an explosion of ramshorns then stop feeding and just squash the snails to feed the fish and you’ll get them under control again.
Malaysian trumpets are awesome for circulating the substrate, I add them on purpose, I don't see them during the day. Snails only become a problem if you overfeed. 👌
I keep my aquarium outdoors. Originally with no lid. I started noticing that nano fish were disappearing, and I just thought they were hiding in the plants or something. Around 6 months later I found the body of a gigantic dragonfly nymph on the substrate. It had been eating my fish, but couldn't climb the glass to metamorphose. That said, I like how they look. They're like underwater preying mantises. I generally like how insects and other arthropods look anyway.
This one is actually the only pest on the guy's list that actually deserves the "f*ck up your aquarium" title. They are true miniature monsters with mouth parts that inspired the Alien movie monsters. When they get bigger they WILL try to grab and kill fish as big as they are. I raised guppies in outdoor barrels and the dragon flies will drop eggs in anything outdoors like that when you're not looking. These monsters will continuously grab and eat your baby fish. The way I found them was at night with a flashlight when they were hunting closer to the surface.
@@strangebraingames9225 And they're very long-lived, like most palaeopterans. Their nymph stage can last for months to years, while their adult form only last for a few days to a few weeks. They're very hard to spot too. I lost like almost all of my embers and cardinals to the one I had.
@@sackzcottgames Most arthropods are beautiful in a suit of armor kind of way. I can't stand caterpillars though. They, on the other hand, are too squishy for me.
MTS are a pain for sure but I do like how they stir up my sandbed. When numbers get out of control, The good ol' leave a wafer at the bottom and manually remove them works wonders for me at least for 6 months when I have to do it again. Not the end of the world. I actually appreciate the language. Shows the real person behind the camera and can help emphasize something youre passionate about. Keep it up.
I’ve had both ramshorn and bladder snails, and I like having them around as scavengers. If their numbers get too high, just reduce food and/or feed them to snail-eating fishes like cichlids, loaches, or puffers. No worries.
It’s good to see you Youtubing again ❤you have such amazing knowledge & love for the craft of keeping fish simple. I look forward to learning so much more. I tried last year to keep a tank, but I managed to kill everything in it, I think at the time our water temp tap water was too hot. I live in the Midwest of WA, I’m going to try again next year when the weather cools a bit.
We all make mistakes keeping fish, especially when starting out, we just learn from the mistakes hopefully. If your water source is not at a good temperature for what you require you could consider filling a container and leaving it for a few hours to come to room temp instead. Good luck.
I keep ramshorns in a few tanks as a food source for the clown loaches. As for duckweed, I dry it and turn it into powder as one of the ingredients in my dry mix. In dry form it's as high as 42% protein. And this is not crude protein but actual amino acid composition. In fresh form I feed it to my goldfish and koi. Even my bala sharks, tinfoil barbs and iridescent sharks (catfish)ardently devour it.
I use it as compost in my indoor pots and in my garden, i dont even water some of my succulents i just mix in a lot of wet duckweed once a month into the soil and that keeps them going
I love my snails. The trumpet snails do a great job of turning the sand substrate to help out rooted plants. The bladder snails and ramshorn snails eat a ton of brown algae in the tank. As long as I don’t over feed, their population remains in check. If it gets out of control, it’s a helpful indicator to me that I’m over feeding. But to each their own!
yea i love ramshorns, they are the cheapest and best option for cleanup crew, if you get too many of them, put a snail trap in or spend 20 minutes picking some out. not really a issue imo!
Thankyou for sharing your experiences and knowledge Patrick. And amen to that. Some people just don't want to deal with it at all, and that's their journey. Honestly, trying to maintain a sterile tank is a lot of work. I've played the middle line with some success however I'm trying an all in ecosystem for the first time. With the help of many resources but alot of guidance from FatherFish here on YT. It's an exciting journey seeing all the life before I've formed an opinion about it being good or bad. Certainly not an instant setup. However, I've found more purposeful and insightful to see the nuances of the slow build up to fish. A magnifying glass is a staple next to the aquarium for hours lost in a vast extra-aquatic👽 world of wonders.
A great predator would also be assassin snails. (Actually a type of whelk for anyone who doesn't know). They have a probiscus that comes up from the front of its body like an elephants trunk. They prey on any other kind of snail and will also scavenge for food in your tank if the snail population has been eradicated. Just don't use these if you plan on having specific snails in your tank like mystery or rabbit the assassins will gang up and eat them. I had a huge outbreak of snails from live plants and the solution I took was using the assassin snails. Now I have some "snails" in my tank that I don't mind watching cruise about. They aren't prolific breeders and need a male and a female. I have 2 in my tank for around a year now and never bred, must be both male or female
I like rams horn snails a lot. They eat algae, clean up stuff like glass and decorations, and eat away the dead useless leaves on plants. Their young are most often fish food, if you keep fish a bit hungry.
Lol. Somehow, duckweed ended up in my single upstairs tank...which was set up several months after I thought I had gotten rid of all the duckweed that was in my "fish room" (basement), so who knows where it even came from. (I wouldn't be surprised if there was like... 1/16th of a leaf hidden in the hornwort, just _waiting_ for its chance to explode all over everything again.)
Getting rid of snails in a tank is quite easy, just get some assassins (literally!). Assassin snails (Anentome helena) will kill and eat other types of snails. Specially good to get rid of MTS, since they also bury themselves in the sand, and after getting rid of the other snails, you won't even see them most of the time, they only come out when you feed the tank. You can then start picking them up to move or sell them.
My first fresh water tank - I soaked EVERYTHING before assembling it - wood, rocks, sand, plants - every single thing I pre soaked in a big bucket with aquarium stuff to clean it all and get rid of any nasties. So far so good... xx
those bits of snails will be the bane of your existence. god my plants washed before planting my tank, saw 2 snails and thought “won’t be an issue, i can drop a veggie and catch em later” it’s been 2 weeks since i started the tank. Some plants are straight up dying due to the snails eating them, and then there’s like 20 now and I often see tiny snails appearing from nowhere. I might consider an assassin snail
Valisneria helped me with duckweed, it takes a bit of time but it will destroy it or reduce it greatly. Regarding planaria I had a big problem with them in one of my tanks until I got a school of 8 ember tetras. They destroyed them lol
MTS are great for the substrate. They move through it aerating it and cleaning. The easiest way to control them is by not overfeeding. Every now and then I set traps with cucumber and catch them out of the aquarium.
Yes this is absolutely true. I do have mts and in my beta tanks they have no baby snails at all. My guppy tanks have a bunch however when I want less snails I take a few assassin snails out of their tank and add them to the tank with too many mts. They keep my sand looking new so I’m gonna keep the mts
To get completely rid of duckweed, I have 2 different ways. 1 - Use a small goldfish. Goldfish eat duckweed like I eat candy. 2 - I catch most of it with a net and then use a DIY surface skimmer with filter wool for a few days. After most of it is eaten/removed you need to pay some attention to the tank every single day removing anything that may look like a single duckweed leaf from the tank. And even after that, everytime I do a water change I do a quick check for any duckweed leaves and removed them.
I once had a mystery snail overpopulation, but then I started feeding less and it magically cleared up super fast, BUT then I discovered two tiny killer snails Helenas that I guess I got by accident on plants and they cleared it up. A bit too well actually, only one survived.
Love my chain loaches ❤ I think the three of them ganged up on my mystery snail!! I have fish for looking at, and fish for working purposes, and they work really well. Thanks for this post 🎉
MTS are my favorite. My tank is always SPOTLESS with these babies around. If i suddenly turn the light on in the middle of the night they are all over my plants and driftwood cleaning! Perfect nightcrew
Anytime i see a pest snail i don't like, i always feed it to my yoyo loaches. Nice snacks! They are always so happy and so trusting in me! 😍 Small fishy friends.
Dragonfly nymphs have their good and bad sides. You explained the bad side, the good side of them is that they become extremely useful in outdoor still freshwater ponds and pools that don't have any fish or shrimp for the nymphs to eat, because they'll take care of all the mosquito larvae, and they're not hard to remove from plants as they don't stick to them like snails do, they can just be washed off.
Always remember buying 3 golden mystery snails for my planted tank because I like how they look to then wake up the next day and see they'd demolished $100s of plants 😑
Kind of hard to show without pictures I guess but these things demolish anything I put in with them. Floating plants, stem plants, epiphytes. So much so that they now just live in my gourami tank that has fake plants as they also rip them up to make nests
@F_isfor_Fish how big are your snails? Generally, a mystery snail won't get much bigger than a golf ball, with most staying under the 2 inch mark. Apple snails grow much faster and larger. Mystery snails generally do not eat healthy plants. They thrive on decaying vegetative plant matter. Apple snails will eat anything in their path. About the only good thing an apple snail will do is clear a tank of duckweed. I had 9 "golden" mystery snails that turned out to be Apple snails. Had 3 in 3 different tanks and lost a ton of plants. I can't bring myself to buy golden mystery snails now. I have magenta, purple, and ivory breeding now. If they throw a golden, that's awesome, but I'll never buy a golden again.
I had bladder snails come in with some floater plants and they were a trial. I almost wiped them out with a purchase of yoyo loaches, but as I heard yoyos become aggressive as they grow, I moved them from my 29-gallon with female bettas, aquatic frogs, neons and white clouds to a 55 with rainbow praecox, large corydoras, and rasboras (where they quickly got huge). The next stage was assassin snails which hasn't solved the problem, but controlled the numbers. The upside to stowaways, I recently bought some red root floats and got bamboo shrimp and a rili shimp in the bag. On duckweed, when it starts getting thick I just scoop it out and feed it to my goldfish.
I have 4 yoyo loaches in a 40g with all kinds of small fish, I even put 6 albino corys that were around 2 months old with them, the loaches completely ignore all the other fish except each other, and these are full grown, 5 to 6 inches each
I had a huge bladder snail problem, so I brought two assassin snails to help manage the numbers. Now I have no bladder snails but hundreds of assassin snails 😂 I donated over 200 to a local fish store recently but it barely made a dent in the population.
@@davidharding1694 If the assassin snails get to be a problem I have 3 local fish stores and a second tank where, if things get desperate, I can feed them to the yoyos
I used to think like that about snails. Not anymore. I have a tank just for them now. The fish in their tank are just to p**p and feed the plants... I've done maintenance zero times in that tank. I only wipe the sponge in the 'pre' filter every month and take readings every other week. Now, duckweed, believe it or not, I was never able to have. Whatever handful I'm given or buy, dies. I don't know why. I can have anubias, amazon sword, valisineria, guppy grass, you name it... never duckweed. It doesn't last a month (and no, I don't keep fish that eats it)
Duckweed likes a specific type of flow and water movement, any tank of mine that has a HOB filter duckweed doesnt survive, they dont agree with the strong downwards flow, but tanks with sponge or canister filters they do amazing in, duckweed likes a smoother outward flow
Duckweed is probably the most manageable and beneficial on this list, i love duckweed its so functional and when maintained in low quantities it looks good in a aquarium or riparium
I agree with you on duckweed. I use Red-root floaters. They are larger and easier to control. They still have to be thinned out once every month or two. But you can definitely get rid of them if you want to.
Duckweed is easy to exterminate if you dont have anything for it to stick to or tangled wth. If you have a load of pothos, peace lilly and bits of wood sticking out of the tank, duckweed will stick to it and grow back from the smallest dried out piece.
Duckweed is good for fish, snail, shrimp food. You can skim the tank with a coffee strainer, dry the duckweed out by just let it sit in a container the chop with a cheap blender. The snails are no problem if you have duck weed. You can sell the rams...or bladder snails. Get the blue or red ones... Also scuds are very benificial. They eat anything in a tank except live plants, the fish like to forage for them.
Helena snails for invasive snails. They also have a good looking shell. Duckweed, I skim off, dry and smash into powder that I occasionally feed to my smaller fish/shrimp.
I wish Helena (Assassin) snails were a little more specific in their targets. They’ll even attack my large Mystery snails. But if you don’t have any snails you want to keep, they are perfect.
I finally got ride of all my duckweed last year but now I have an abundance of darf salvinia. It is easy enough to scoop off the top with a basket leftover from an aquarium plant. The amphipods eat it over time. With Malaysian trumpet snails I started with one and now they are everywhere along with the bladder snails.
I'm new in the aquarium world & got a 5 gallon tank from a family member. Bought 3 easy plants, a mossball & 4 Nerite snails to begin with. I did my research with that they only breed in brakkish water. It might be a bit of a boring aquarium now but I love it, definitely gonna upgrade to a bigger tank to start trying things out with fish now I know I can keep something as boring as snails & plants alive. But I love em!
That is, unapologetically, definitely a cool aquarium. Life is fascinating, no matter how common or uncommon! Major kudos to the gradual entry, the empathy is commendable, and the diligence and patience of research is a good skill to have. There is always more to learn! You don't need to know this, you already understand, however that pace and care will save you (and the aquarium life) alot of suffering in the process. The joy is you have more space for the beauty of healthy, thriving specimens to wonder over😍 May you enjoy the hobby and keep being fabulously you.
I have 4 native nano tanks that are copies of areas I’ve found in CQ. (Sleepy cod, gobies, rainbow fish and gudgeons) I put a lot of stuff out of the Fitzroy river strait into my tank. He’s right, snails will be brought in. I try to just maintain them when I do water changes by sucking up all the babies and eggs I find. I pour them out on my pineapples I’m growing. They are going gangbusters. Cheers for the video mate.
You have to treat the tank multiple times and stirr up as much substrate as you can at the beginning of the treatment. Planaria lay eggs with a incubation period of 2-3 weeks. So treat again after 3 weeks. Problem solved.
I don't mind bladder snails since they stay small and are easy to regulate if you aren't overfeeding. I mostly keep planted nano tanks, so my list would be a little different. Number one for me is scuds. They might be fine in a big tank with large fish, but scuds can demolish a nano tank. The adults are too big for nano fish to eat, so they get out of hand quickly. Planaria and hydra for the same reasons you said. Cladophora algae, bc it can't be killed without nuking the tank and all of the plants in it. Black beard and staghorn algae, bc they put up quite a battle to get rid of them, and they do a number on your plants. I hate Malaysian trumpet snails bc like you said, they're instantly out of control. If you see one, you have one hundred hiding. Most other snail populations can be controlled by feeding less, but MTS don't seem to care. Little assholes.
I love Malaysian trumpet snails. I always add Malaysian trumpets, especially in tanks where I don't keep corydoras or any fish that stir up the substrate. They keep the substrate looking clean and healthy. Sure they can be a little unsightly if they overpopulate, but that is also a sign that you might reduce your feeding. Goes for any snail btw. No excess food, no (or less) snails. But some can be a bit more tricky to reduce.
I'm still wondering about those aquarium stands, do aquariums not need any surface under them as long as the edges are all on a surface? Does this work with all aquariums?
I had (and still have) issues with pest snails but what I find helps is putting in a few assassin snails in the tank. I put 5 assassin snails in one of my tanks and thye killed over 40 bladder snails and ramshorn snails.
Assasin snail exist bro and theyre the best for snail invasions. If they are doing well you will start to notice empty snail shells everywhere and i like that for some reason. Mine even breed and they lay very little eggs. Ive got like 3-4 from 2 snails in like 4-7 months
Thanks for just being yourself. I am so tired of content providers who are afraid to use words that people pretend they don’t use. I should get a t-shirt that reads, “Fuck the Fuckers.” I also do enjoy your advice. It’s solid, simple advice that other content providers turn into complicated, elaborate solutions which cost a lot of money. Good job!
I have MTS in my large planted tank to aerate the substrate, and ramshorns in my 40 gallon where I cultivate water sprite and Java Fern to eat the dead plant matter. In both cases, I regularly harvest from both snail populations and feed them to my Green Spotted Puffers for a crunchy snack. Hydra are an underrated threat: they might only eat small things in the tank, but their stings affect everyone in a nano tank. Nano fish won't thrive if they're constantly being stung, from my experience. Dragonfly larvae are bad, but I've honestly never encountered one from any LFS I've visited in my area. And I've been in the hobby over 20 years. It's not a rare occurrence, but I would consider it uncommon.
I personally like the malaysan trumpet snails, I have them in one of the tanks with sand substrate and I think they're moving the substrate a bit to keep it healthy, also kind of cute. But idk if planaria also eat their babies as I've been seeing them less in the tank that has them.
Literally an hour ago finally put praziquantel (Sera Tremazol) in one of my tanks with shrimp and planaria. It's been there for more than 6 months and the shrimp population has been decreasing, also planaria looks gross to me. I tried removing when I saw, but it didn't help much. It's rare that I see them, but I know they're there and ugh. A month ago I added baby platies but I didn't see them going after the planaria. The reason I finally did this because I restarted the big tank and want to take some plants from that one and I hope this will kill any of them and I don't bring planaria to the new one.
The planaria lay eggs with a incubation period of 2-3 weeks. You kill the hatched planaria, but not the eggs. So treat the tank again after 3 weeks to get completely rid of them. You also have to stirr up as much substrate as you can, so the praziquantel can reach the deeper layers.
I've got ramshorn, bladder and tracksnails in my shrimp tanks. I only feed very little so the ramshorn snails rather starve to death than reproduce, but it's true they can be a bother. On the other side I had a strange worm winking at me from the substrate the other day. That scared me quite a bit because it looked rather big until I found out it probably is a tubifex. Don't know how I got that, an egg must have been on some plants. :/
Some experience with PLANARIA: You can use "No Planaria" indeed, but there is a predatory shrimp called "Macrobrachium peguense" which love to eat the planaria. These shrimps get quite big and will also eat small fish and other inhabitants. So choose wisely before considering to add them. PROBLEMS: Planaria hide in the substrate. You look into your tank , see 1 or 2 planaria and you normaly think "Its no big deal". BUT, often there are hundreds or thousends of them in the substrate. The "No Planaria" chemicals cant really reach the lower layers of deep substrates, so some planaria will always survive. The shrimps (Macrobrachium peguense) have long, small arms and can pick the planaria even out of the smallest gaps. They really serach for the planaria. So instead of treating the tank 2 or 3 times with "No Planaria" and kinda f**k the biology and/or sturring up your substrate, try the shrimps and the problem will solve itself. P.S. Feeding less makes the shrimp even more hungry ;)
Ramshorn snails are what got me addicted to the hobby. My paradise fish started breeding immediately after I put them in a tank with ramshorns. They are a great live food for a lot of labrynth fish. I then went from 2 tanks to rooms of tanks. Snails help with an ecosystem in too many ways to mention here.
Yeah I think the same. But I had a huge die off on my ramshorn snails - Do you maybe know any reason why this could happen? Alot of empty shells, I just spotted a leech but leeches don't eat snails..or?!
@@m.hreptilesandmore7913 My first guesses woudl be planaria and low calcium levels. You can use a planaria catcher (insted of No Planaria, which I don't believe is snail safe -- but check me on that), which is just a glass tube with inlets that trap the planaria inside, because they go after the bait you put inside. Low calcium is particularly problematic if you have soft water or keep the ramshorns with shrimp. If your ramshorns have a lot of white divots in their shells, that's an indication of mineral deficiencies (mostly calcium -- but also magnesium, etc.) in the water. Check the GH, and then use Mineralize (the product), which will typically handle the problem. You want a GH between 7 and 10 for healthy shell development in ramshorns. And, yeah, I really enjoy ramshorns too -- especially when they start cycling through their color morphs. To keep the populations in check, however, I have found assassin snails to be helpful -- but you can't have any nerite or mystery (or other) snails in the tank, because the assassins will eat them too.
Lymnaea stagnalis are your pond snails or they don't like temperatures above 27 degrees and die if you keep the water at 27 degrees or higher for a long time very few survive, but most snail species only become a problem if you feed too much
You mentioned leeches but not the cure? I've got leeches in my shrimp tanks. Any way to get rid of them? I've actually seen them attacking and eating even larger crystal shrimp
The animal that you showed was not a dragonfly larva, but a damsel fly larva. You can tell because it’s gills were external. They’re not quite as bad as dragonfly larva.
5:24 damn and here I am, duckweed in every tank, ramshorn bladder and trumpet snails in every tank, just enjoying their ecosystem services. 😅 I had my endler population decimated by a dragonfly larvae once. Luckily it caught males and babies only. I literally only discovered it when it was grown up and I found it and the pupa it had just left behind. I don’t know whether it came through the window my tank was sitting next to during summer or from plants I bought from an outside holding tank in a garden center. Those are definitely something to look out for. Generally speaking the safest option is not to introduce anything new to established tanks. Second safest is quarantine, but it’s not really feasible for most hobbyists. I’m lucky, my guppy colony is still alive and thriving after 12 years. I am concerned about genetics, but I also don’t want to introduce non purebred fish to the colony on accident and I certainly don’t want to risk introducing illnesses or parasites.
Those little snails are possibly a species of ramshorn. They get no more than 1/8 inch in diameter and avoid predation by holding their shells flat against the surface they are stuck to.
Yoyo loaches work the fastest to control snails, but pea puffers will do it to but usually not until they get a little older, for the longest time I thought my pea puffers weren't eating snails, then about 4 months after having them I stop noticing any snails on the substrate or glass
Fun fact: If you cut a planaria in half or more the parts will regenerate into seperate planarias ending up in even more of them beacuse of thier impressive regeneration abilities and the exact same goes for hydra.
For snails use assassin snail and pull out the big one physically. For duckweed wash your plants before adding and spent some time removing them physically from your tank as well. both of this have their usage but you don't actually need them either.
Lol I got into the aquarium hobby to prop duckweed for my pet ducks. It's a great source of niacin that ducks need. Find a friend with ducks duck weed haters😆
for some reason, i cant grow duckweed? i bought some with mini water lettuce months ago and it just cannot take hold in any of my tanks, but i keep pretty high flow in my tanks too with my sponge filters so maybe thats why. even in my low flow tanks my duckweed just dies:( another thing i've been struggling with is algae, cannot grow algae anywhere and lord i just want some green water, i cant even find someone with a colony near me and i'd rather not ship algae. every other plant of mine has taken off ,my ferns are getting gigantic and i need to pull off so many pups with no where to put them
I thought No Planaria kills snails? I used it once and it seemed to do the trick. Since then ive got one rams horn snail in my tank and it hasnt reproduced . I guess you need 2 or more? I also thought snails were hemaphraditic.
Lol. Don't mind any of those snails in my tanks. They eat tons of algae. Also don't mind duckweed. My gold fish tank gets 99% of the duckweed from my other tanks every couple of days and they DEVOUR it! Free food! Love your channel though, bro.
I had an extremely bad infestation of snails that lived in the substrate of my 6ft aquarium, I had them cause an ammonia spike when the filter couldn't keep up with their waste, I removed all the fish and plants, I dosed the aquarium with sea salt, the had to sift the sand substrate, I removed over half a 10 litre bucket of dead snails, thankfully no more snails! But I still have that bloody green hairy algae!
Really good information, Nick. From what I understand, No-Planaria can also be used for eradicating snails. I just got some on a recommendation for my bladder (pond) snail problem and I'm going to give it a go. I have killed off bladder snails in a tank with just plants and the snails by adding about 2 liters of club soda to about 20 liters of water. I gusess it creates an overdose of CO2 and ultimately suffocates the snails. Seemed to work well with a plant-only quarantine setup. Anyway, just my two cents. Cheers! ~Ron
Bladderwort is actually just a floater plant with little vein like traps that suck up organisms like young daphnia when they swim by it beacuse the traps have a little lid and sensory hair next to it that open the trap when triggered causing a vaccun to suck in the prey where they get digested. Its not a pest and i think its really cool. The thing you mistook bkadderwort for is definetly some type of algae probably related to hair/string algae. Im not quite sure but it might actually be hair/string algae itself but im not sure beacuse there is so many algae species out there.
I had pest bladder snails, I put about 50 guppies in the tank and they ate all the baby snails til there weren't nomore. They didn't kill the trumpet snails
I learned the hard about duckweed....was excited about be a new fish keeper so i asked if i could get some from my lfs...boy did i get a look from him! Lol. Now i know why 😅
swear ive subscribed to you at least 3 times in the last couple months, i hope its just my youtube being stupid and your not losing subs!! got to love youtube lol
I’d take ramshorns over bloody bladder snails any day! Only positive is my goldfish love them. I did once use some spider substrate in a tank and ended- up with dragonfly larvae everywhere which sucked, but they were fairly easy to catch…
I found one way to get rid of duckweed is to lower the temperature. Once I removed the heater from my guppy tank the duckweed stopped reproducing and eventually went away completely.
I really hate limpet snails. Costed me sooooo much time to keep them under control and over 8 years to get really rid of them. My 5 cents to keep snails out of your aquarium is putting new plants in water with alum.
I started a new tank and purposely started it with all tissue culture plants. Then i lost my mind and bought a beautiful large valisneria that wasn't tissue culture. Just completely forgot. Needless to say, i now have billions of bladder snails- the thing i was trying to avoid. I breed slow eaters in this tank, so i dont want snails in there. 🙄
My dad use to always wash new plants in a salt bath to get rid of any snails or other pests.
He had a aquatic shop for 50 yrs
🎉
What ratio of salt and water and how long? What kind of salt? Thank you!
Fun thing, in saltwater aquariums, people do freshwater baths instead, to get rid of some pests and parasites.
@@Apistoleon all I can remember as it was back in the 70,s . He used cooking salt not table salt and just scooped 2-3 table spoons in a bucket then rinsed in another bucket of fresh water. Table salt has or did have iodine in it. Even back then everything came lead weighted and bunched wrapped in wet newspaper and my job was to plant all the new clean stock in 2 x 4’ tanks twice a week after school.🥳
Stupid question, but does it also handle the eggs? I understand the mechanics of snails dying to salt, and im assuming the eggs are largely water too but wanna be sure lol
@@ajet8284 I honestly don’t know but I do know there were no snails hatching out in my dad’s 2 x 4’ plant display tanks that I had to plant out for selling on twice a week. So the salt must have killed them too.
Ramshorn snails are never a problem unless they are out-competing some other small detritivore species. Unless your over feeding, their population will not get out of control, same with pond snails. I've found ramshorns do a pretty good job of keeping the glass free of algae, they love to eat dead foliage, and they add a pop of color.
İn mine aquarium they just get out of control i just collect like 250 baby ones they reproduce crazy
I have them because it's claimed that they don't eat healthy leaves. Don't believe that. They are laying waste to my plants. They eat healthy leaves and new growth.
actually true
@@hzpz-ur1qe In my 8 aquariums I haven't had an issue in over 2 years. The only "problem" I've had is their population fluctuating based on the amount of algae available for them to graze on.
I keep them as a food source for Guppies and shrimp. I just squash them against the glass and fish go crazy for them. Also they are a good way to understand if you are feeding too much. If you are getting an explosion of ramshorns then stop feeding and just squash the snails to feed the fish and you’ll get them under control again.
Malaysian trumpets are awesome for circulating the substrate, I add them on purpose, I don't see them during the day. Snails only become a problem if you overfeed. 👌
I keep my aquarium outdoors. Originally with no lid. I started noticing that nano fish were disappearing, and I just thought they were hiding in the plants or something. Around 6 months later I found the body of a gigantic dragonfly nymph on the substrate. It had been eating my fish, but couldn't climb the glass to metamorphose.
That said, I like how they look. They're like underwater preying mantises. I generally like how insects and other arthropods look anyway.
Bruh
This one is actually the only pest on the guy's list that actually deserves the "f*ck up your aquarium" title. They are true miniature monsters with mouth parts that inspired the Alien movie monsters. When they get bigger they WILL try to grab and kill fish as big as they are. I raised guppies in outdoor barrels and the dragon flies will drop eggs in anything outdoors like that when you're not looking. These monsters will continuously grab and eat your baby fish. The way I found them was at night with a flashlight when they were hunting closer to the surface.
@@strangebraingames9225 And they're very long-lived, like most palaeopterans. Their nymph stage can last for months to years, while their adult form only last for a few days to a few weeks. They're very hard to spot too.
I lost like almost all of my embers and cardinals to the one I had.
a true one here, i also enjoy most arthropods' looks
@@sackzcottgames Most arthropods are beautiful in a suit of armor kind of way. I can't stand caterpillars though. They, on the other hand, are too squishy for me.
MTS are a pain for sure but I do like how they stir up my sandbed. When numbers get out of control, The good ol' leave a wafer at the bottom and manually remove them works wonders for me at least for 6 months when I have to do it again. Not the end of the world. I actually appreciate the language. Shows the real person behind the camera and can help emphasize something youre passionate about. Keep it up.
I’ve had both ramshorn and bladder snails, and I like having them around as scavengers. If their numbers get too high, just reduce food and/or feed them to snail-eating fishes like cichlids, loaches, or puffers. No worries.
It’s good to see you Youtubing again ❤you have such amazing knowledge & love for the craft of keeping fish simple. I look forward to learning so much more. I tried last year to keep a tank, but I managed to kill everything in it, I think at the time our water temp tap water was too hot. I live in the Midwest of WA, I’m going to try again next year when the weather cools a bit.
We all make mistakes keeping fish, especially when starting out, we just learn from the mistakes hopefully.
If your water source is not at a good temperature for what you require you could consider filling a container and leaving it for a few hours to come to room temp instead.
Good luck.
I keep ramshorns in a few tanks as a food source for the clown loaches. As for duckweed, I dry it and turn it into powder as one of the ingredients in my dry mix. In dry form it's as high as 42% protein. And this is not crude protein but actual amino acid composition. In fresh form I feed it to my goldfish and koi. Even my bala sharks, tinfoil barbs and iridescent sharks (catfish)ardently devour it.
duck weed is a human superfood
I use it as compost in my indoor pots and in my garden, i dont even water some of my succulents i just mix in a lot of wet duckweed once a month into the soil and that keeps them going
Damn I just pulled a kilo out of one of my tanks and binned it!😢
@@Shleeeemp Next time :)
When life gives you lemons..... 💪💪💪
I love my snails. The trumpet snails do a great job of turning the sand substrate to help out rooted plants. The bladder snails and ramshorn snails eat a ton of brown algae in the tank. As long as I don’t over feed, their population remains in check. If it gets out of control, it’s a helpful indicator to me that I’m over feeding. But to each their own!
If you have algae the snails will also make them breed like crazy, not just overfeeding
yea i love ramshorns, they are the cheapest and best option for cleanup crew, if you get too many of them, put a snail trap in or spend 20 minutes picking some out. not really a issue imo!
Thankyou for sharing your experiences and knowledge Patrick. And amen to that.
Some people just don't want to deal with it at all, and that's their journey.
Honestly, trying to maintain a sterile tank is a lot of work. I've played the middle line with some success however I'm trying an all in ecosystem for the first time. With the help of many resources but alot of guidance from FatherFish here on YT. It's an exciting journey seeing all the life before I've formed an opinion about it being good or bad. Certainly not an instant setup. However, I've found more purposeful and insightful to see the nuances of the slow build up to fish.
A magnifying glass is a staple next to the aquarium for hours lost in a vast extra-aquatic👽 world of wonders.
Do you have any videos about making racks/shelving for fish tanks?
A great predator would also be assassin snails. (Actually a type of whelk for anyone who doesn't know). They have a probiscus that comes up from the front of its body like an elephants trunk. They prey on any other kind of snail and will also scavenge for food in your tank if the snail population has been eradicated. Just don't use these if you plan on having specific snails in your tank like mystery or rabbit the assassins will gang up and eat them. I had a huge outbreak of snails from live plants and the solution I took was using the assassin snails. Now I have some "snails" in my tank that I don't mind watching cruise about. They aren't prolific breeders and need a male and a female. I have 2 in my tank for around a year now and never bred, must be both male or female
I like rams horn snails a lot. They eat algae, clean up stuff like glass and decorations, and eat away the dead useless leaves on plants. Their young are most often fish food, if you keep fish a bit hungry.
Lol. Somehow, duckweed ended up in my single upstairs tank...which was set up several months after I thought I had gotten rid of all the duckweed that was in my "fish room" (basement), so who knows where it even came from. (I wouldn't be surprised if there was like... 1/16th of a leaf hidden in the hornwort, just _waiting_ for its chance to explode all over everything again.)
10:13 dragonfly larvae have a symbiotic relationship with nymphae(water lilys) plants, so if h have lilys DEFINITELY look for larvae
Getting rid of snails in a tank is quite easy, just get some assassins (literally!). Assassin snails (Anentome helena) will kill and eat other types of snails. Specially good to get rid of MTS, since they also bury themselves in the sand, and after getting rid of the other snails, you won't even see them most of the time, they only come out when you feed the tank. You can then start picking them up to move or sell them.
My first fresh water tank - I soaked EVERYTHING before assembling it - wood, rocks, sand, plants - every single thing I pre soaked in a big bucket with aquarium stuff to clean it all and get rid of any nasties. So far so good... xx
those bits of snails will be the bane of your existence. god my plants washed before planting my tank, saw 2 snails and thought “won’t be an issue, i can drop a veggie and catch em later”
it’s been 2 weeks since i started the tank. Some plants are straight up dying due to the snails eating them, and then there’s like 20 now and I often see tiny snails appearing from nowhere. I might consider an assassin snail
Valisneria helped me with duckweed, it takes a bit of time but it will destroy it or reduce it greatly. Regarding planaria I had a big problem with them in one of my tanks until I got a school of 8 ember tetras. They destroyed them lol
MTS are great for the substrate. They move through it aerating it and cleaning. The easiest way to control them is by not overfeeding. Every now and then I set traps with cucumber and catch them out of the aquarium.
Yes this is absolutely true. I do have mts and in my beta tanks they have no baby snails at all. My guppy tanks have a bunch however when I want less snails I take a few assassin snails out of their tank and add them to the tank with too many mts. They keep my sand looking new so I’m gonna keep the mts
To get completely rid of duckweed, I have 2 different ways. 1 - Use a small goldfish. Goldfish eat duckweed like I eat candy. 2 - I catch most of it with a net and then use a DIY surface skimmer with filter wool for a few days. After most of it is eaten/removed you need to pay some attention to the tank every single day removing anything that may look like a single duckweed leaf from the tank. And even after that, everytime I do a water change I do a quick check for any duckweed leaves and removed them.
But why would you want to get rid of gods gift to aquariums terrariums and gardens
@@lruddy8820 There are lots of god's gifts I don't want in my tanks...
I once had a mystery snail overpopulation, but then I started feeding less and it magically cleared up super fast, BUT then I discovered two tiny killer snails Helenas that I guess I got by accident on plants and they cleared it up. A bit too well actually, only one survived.
Love my chain loaches ❤
I think the three of them ganged up on my mystery snail!!
I have fish for looking at, and fish for working purposes, and they work really well.
Thanks for this post 🎉
What a honest title!
Great advice Nick. I never thought snails could be an issue but some of my tanks have bad issues with them. They are great cleaner though.
The fact you didn't mention Bladder snails is surprising to me. Ramhorn I haven't heard being called a Pest, but Bladder snails, Very much so.
I think he called them pond snails.
It’s the same thing as a pond snail
MTS are my favorite. My tank is always SPOTLESS with these babies around. If i suddenly turn the light on in the middle of the night they are all over my plants and driftwood cleaning! Perfect nightcrew
I’m so glad that I watched this. I have a dragonfly nymph in my tank. I posted it in my fish group on FB and no one responded. I gotta find it.
Anytime i see a pest snail i don't like, i always feed it to my yoyo loaches. Nice snacks! They are always so happy and so trusting in me! 😍 Small fishy friends.
Absolutely love the title! Thanks for any other great educational upload 🥰
Really liked the video and could you do a breeding guppies in a bucket like you did with betas and other fish
just got my first spawn of blue eyed forktails cause of you. love your channel
Dragonfly nymphs have their good and bad sides. You explained the bad side, the good side of them is that they become extremely useful in outdoor still freshwater ponds and pools that don't have any fish or shrimp for the nymphs to eat, because they'll take care of all the mosquito larvae, and they're not hard to remove from plants as they don't stick to them like snails do, they can just be washed off.
Always remember buying 3 golden mystery snails for my planted tank because I like how they look to then wake up the next day and see they'd demolished $100s of plants 😑
I'll bet you anything, you ended up with apple snails. Same thing happened to me. Figured it out when they laid a hot pink egg clutch.
Oh no!! My snails clean the plants I have, what type of plants? 😢
100% apple snails, mystery snails don't eat most plants
Kind of hard to show without pictures I guess but these things demolish anything I put in with them. Floating plants, stem plants, epiphytes. So much so that they now just live in my gourami tank that has fake plants as they also rip them up to make nests
@F_isfor_Fish how big are your snails? Generally, a mystery snail won't get much bigger than a golf ball, with most staying under the 2 inch mark. Apple snails grow much faster and larger. Mystery snails generally do not eat healthy plants. They thrive on decaying vegetative plant matter. Apple snails will eat anything in their path. About the only good thing an apple snail will do is clear a tank of duckweed. I had 9 "golden" mystery snails that turned out to be Apple snails. Had 3 in 3 different tanks and lost a ton of plants. I can't bring myself to buy golden mystery snails now. I have magenta, purple, and ivory breeding now. If they throw a golden, that's awesome, but I'll never buy a golden again.
I had bladder snails come in with some floater plants and they were a trial. I almost wiped them out with a purchase of yoyo loaches, but as I heard yoyos become aggressive as they grow, I moved them from my 29-gallon with female bettas, aquatic frogs, neons and white clouds to a 55 with rainbow praecox, large corydoras, and rasboras (where they quickly got huge). The next stage was assassin snails which hasn't solved the problem, but controlled the numbers. The upside to stowaways, I recently bought some red root floats and got bamboo shrimp and a rili shimp in the bag. On duckweed, when it starts getting thick I just scoop it out and feed it to my goldfish.
I have 4 yoyo loaches in a 40g with all kinds of small fish, I even put 6 albino corys that were around 2 months old with them, the loaches completely ignore all the other fish except each other, and these are full grown, 5 to 6 inches each
I had a huge bladder snail problem, so I brought two assassin snails to help manage the numbers. Now I have no bladder snails but hundreds of assassin snails 😂 I donated over 200 to a local fish store recently but it barely made a dent in the population.
@@davidharding1694 If the assassin snails get to be a problem I have 3 local fish stores and a second tank where, if things get desperate, I can feed them to the yoyos
This channel is underrated so much great content come on guys. Let’s hit up that like button and share with somebody.
And subscribe! 💙
I used to think like that about snails. Not anymore. I have a tank just for them now. The fish in their tank are just to p**p and feed the plants... I've done maintenance zero times in that tank. I only wipe the sponge in the 'pre' filter every month and take readings every other week. Now, duckweed, believe it or not, I was never able to have. Whatever handful I'm given or buy, dies. I don't know why. I can have anubias, amazon sword, valisineria, guppy grass, you name it... never duckweed. It doesn't last a month (and no, I don't keep fish that eats it)
Duckweed likes a specific type of flow and water movement, any tank of mine that has a HOB filter duckweed doesnt survive, they dont agree with the strong downwards flow, but tanks with sponge or canister filters they do amazing in, duckweed likes a smoother outward flow
I've never thought about having a quarantine tank for plants.Thanks for the tip! I hate planeria too. They are so gross!
What are the tiny white worms that I see on my glass and how do you get rid of them?
Detritus worms, feed your fish less.
Duckweed is probably the most manageable and beneficial on this list, i love duckweed its so functional and when maintained in low quantities it looks good in a aquarium or riparium
Love you and your videos bro! Keep up the good work during your transition. We love you buddy.
I agree with you on duckweed. I use Red-root floaters. They are larger and easier to control. They still have to be thinned out once every month or two. But you can definitely get rid of them if you want to.
You are so funny. I don't have tanks anymore but I enjoy watching. Thanks. Ontario Canada. Peace.
I love ramshorn and pond and or bladder snails free little helpers! ❤
Duckweed is easy to exterminate if you dont have anything for it to stick to or tangled wth. If you have a load of pothos, peace lilly and bits of wood sticking out of the tank, duckweed will stick to it and grow back from the smallest dried out piece.
can you please do a short video about how your fish rack's behind you are made? thank you in advance :)
Duckweed is good for fish, snail, shrimp food.
You can skim the tank with a coffee strainer, dry the duckweed out by just let it sit in a container the chop with a cheap blender.
The snails are no problem if you have duck weed. You can sell the rams...or bladder snails. Get the blue or red ones...
Also scuds are very benificial. They eat anything in a tank except live plants, the fish like to forage for them.
I've seen there are glass tube traps for planeria as well!
How about nerites? Wish you also talked about them
I love Nerite snails. Some people don’t like the sterile eggs they leave everywhere. But the Mystery and Ramshorn snails make short work of those.
@@pdmckinn1961only the female ones lay eggs unlike pest snails
Helena snails for invasive snails. They also have a good looking shell.
Duckweed, I skim off, dry and smash into powder that I occasionally feed to my smaller fish/shrimp.
I wish Helena (Assassin) snails were a little more specific in their targets. They’ll even attack my large Mystery snails. But if you don’t have any snails you want to keep, they are perfect.
I finally got ride of all my duckweed last year but now I have an abundance of darf salvinia. It is easy enough to scoop off the top with a basket leftover from an aquarium plant. The amphipods eat it over time. With Malaysian trumpet snails I started with one and now they are everywhere along with the bladder snails.
I'm new in the aquarium world & got a 5 gallon tank from a family member. Bought 3 easy plants, a mossball & 4 Nerite snails to begin with.
I did my research with that they only breed in brakkish water. It might be a bit of a boring aquarium now but I love it, definitely gonna upgrade to a bigger tank to start trying things out with fish now I know I can keep something as boring as snails & plants alive. But I love em!
That is, unapologetically, definitely a cool aquarium. Life is fascinating, no matter how common or uncommon!
Major kudos to the gradual entry, the empathy is commendable, and the diligence and patience of research is a good skill to have. There is always more to learn!
You don't need to know this, you already understand, however that pace and care will save you (and the aquarium life) alot of suffering in the process. The joy is you have more space for the beauty of healthy, thriving specimens to wonder over😍 May you enjoy the hobby and keep being fabulously you.
I have 4 native nano tanks that are copies of areas I’ve found in CQ. (Sleepy cod, gobies, rainbow fish and gudgeons) I put a lot of stuff out of the Fitzroy river strait into my tank. He’s right, snails will be brought in. I try to just maintain them when I do water changes by sucking up all the babies and eggs I find. I pour them out on my pineapples I’m growing. They are going gangbusters. Cheers for the video mate.
I used to feed those dragonfly nymphs to my scorpion and it loved them. Those nymphs are no joke in the water but on land they are helpless.
Planaria are an endless issue fore me, i keep "no planaria" in stock at all times.
You have to treat the tank multiple times and stirr up as much substrate as you can at the beginning of the treatment. Planaria lay eggs with a incubation period of 2-3 weeks. So treat again after 3 weeks. Problem solved.
@TheTrompetenpeter I have mostly bare-bottom tanks, they go away but come back regularly. I assume it's my feedings causing it.
@@ChucksFeeesh Try "Lernex" from a company called colombo. But caution, it kills snails and shrimps.
@@ChucksFeeesh Try "Lernex" from a company called Colombo. But caution, it kills shrimps and snails.
I put ONE WCMM in my nano shrimp tank.
No more worms…
I don't mind bladder snails since they stay small and are easy to regulate if you aren't overfeeding. I mostly keep planted nano tanks, so my list would be a little different. Number one for me is scuds. They might be fine in a big tank with large fish, but scuds can demolish a nano tank. The adults are too big for nano fish to eat, so they get out of hand quickly. Planaria and hydra for the same reasons you said. Cladophora algae, bc it can't be killed without nuking the tank and all of the plants in it. Black beard and staghorn algae, bc they put up quite a battle to get rid of them, and they do a number on your plants. I hate Malaysian trumpet snails bc like you said, they're instantly out of control. If you see one, you have one hundred hiding. Most other snail populations can be controlled by feeding less, but MTS don't seem to care. Little assholes.
I love Malaysian trumpet snails. I always add Malaysian trumpets, especially in tanks where I don't keep corydoras or any fish that stir up the substrate. They keep the substrate looking clean and healthy. Sure they can be a little unsightly if they overpopulate, but that is also a sign that you might reduce your feeding. Goes for any snail btw. No excess food, no (or less) snails. But some can be a bit more tricky to reduce.
I'm still wondering about those aquarium stands, do aquariums not need any surface under them as long as the edges are all on a surface? Does this work with all aquariums?
I had (and still have) issues with pest snails but what I find helps is putting in a few assassin snails in the tank. I put 5 assassin snails in one of my tanks and thye killed over 40 bladder snails and ramshorn snails.
Assasin snail exist bro and theyre the best for snail invasions. If they are doing well you will start to notice empty snail shells everywhere and i like that for some reason. Mine even breed and they lay very little eggs. Ive got like 3-4 from 2 snails in like 4-7 months
I used to have like 3-4 pond snails in my aquarium. now I have 2 pond snails and they are growing but are not reproducing. I might keep them 😅
Thanks for just being yourself. I am so tired of content providers who are afraid to use words that people pretend they don’t use. I should get a t-shirt that reads, “Fuck the Fuckers.” I also do enjoy your advice. It’s solid, simple advice that other content providers turn into complicated, elaborate solutions which cost a lot of money. Good job!
I have MTS in my large planted tank to aerate the substrate, and ramshorns in my 40 gallon where I cultivate water sprite and Java Fern to eat the dead plant matter. In both cases, I regularly harvest from both snail populations and feed them to my Green Spotted Puffers for a crunchy snack.
Hydra are an underrated threat: they might only eat small things in the tank, but their stings affect everyone in a nano tank. Nano fish won't thrive if they're constantly being stung, from my experience.
Dragonfly larvae are bad, but I've honestly never encountered one from any LFS I've visited in my area. And I've been in the hobby over 20 years. It's not a rare occurrence, but I would consider it uncommon.
I personally like the malaysan trumpet snails, I have them in one of the tanks with sand substrate and I think they're moving the substrate a bit to keep it healthy, also kind of cute. But idk if planaria also eat their babies as I've been seeing them less in the tank that has them.
Have you hatched mystery snail eggs? Is there an easy way of doing this? Great video again.
I had all the snails and they can become a problem only in overfed tanks.
Ramshorn ate great. Fun to watch, do NOT eat plants. Just need toncollect the eggs attached to the windows once every two weeks
Sorry meant the Yoda snails, If ITS the Same in english
Literally an hour ago finally put praziquantel (Sera Tremazol) in one of my tanks with shrimp and planaria. It's been there for more than 6 months and the shrimp population has been decreasing, also planaria looks gross to me. I tried removing when I saw, but it didn't help much. It's rare that I see them, but I know they're there and ugh. A month ago I added baby platies but I didn't see them going after the planaria. The reason I finally did this because I restarted the big tank and want to take some plants from that one and I hope this will kill any of them and I don't bring planaria to the new one.
The planaria lay eggs with a incubation period of 2-3 weeks. You kill the hatched planaria, but not the eggs. So treat the tank again after 3 weeks to get completely rid of them. You also have to stirr up as much substrate as you can, so the praziquantel can reach the deeper layers.
I've got ramshorn, bladder and tracksnails in my shrimp tanks. I only feed very little so the ramshorn snails rather starve to death than reproduce, but it's true they can be a bother. On the other side I had a strange worm winking at me from the substrate the other day. That scared me quite a bit because it looked rather big until I found out it probably is a tubifex. Don't know how I got that, an egg must have been on some plants. :/
If you ever have a problem with duckweed, just put a goldfish or a couple and they clean it up real nice!
Some experience with PLANARIA: You can use "No Planaria" indeed, but there is a predatory shrimp called "Macrobrachium peguense" which love to eat the planaria. These shrimps get quite big and will also eat small fish and other inhabitants. So choose wisely before considering to add them.
PROBLEMS: Planaria hide in the substrate. You look into your tank , see 1 or 2 planaria and you normaly think "Its no big deal". BUT, often there are hundreds or thousends of them in the substrate. The "No Planaria" chemicals cant really reach the lower layers of deep substrates, so some planaria will always survive. The shrimps (Macrobrachium peguense) have long, small arms and can pick the planaria even out of the smallest gaps. They really serach for the planaria. So instead of treating the tank 2 or 3 times with "No Planaria" and kinda f**k the biology and/or sturring up your substrate, try the shrimps and the problem will solve itself.
P.S. Feeding less makes the shrimp even more hungry ;)
Ramshorn snails are what got me addicted to the hobby. My paradise fish started breeding immediately after I put them in a tank with ramshorns. They are a great live food for a lot of labrynth fish. I then went from 2 tanks to rooms of tanks. Snails help with an ecosystem in too many ways to mention here.
Yeah I think the same. But I had a huge die off on my ramshorn snails - Do you maybe know any reason why this could happen? Alot of empty shells, I just spotted a leech but leeches don't eat snails..or?!
@@m.hreptilesandmore7913leeches will eat the snails :)
@@m.hreptilesandmore7913 My first guesses woudl be planaria and low calcium levels. You can use a planaria catcher (insted of No Planaria, which I don't believe is snail safe -- but check me on that), which is just a glass tube with inlets that trap the planaria inside, because they go after the bait you put inside. Low calcium is particularly problematic if you have soft water or keep the ramshorns with shrimp. If your ramshorns have a lot of white divots in their shells, that's an indication of mineral deficiencies (mostly calcium -- but also magnesium, etc.) in the water. Check the GH, and then use Mineralize (the product), which will typically handle the problem. You want a GH between 7 and 10 for healthy shell development in ramshorns. And, yeah, I really enjoy ramshorns too -- especially when they start cycling through their color morphs. To keep the populations in check, however, I have found assassin snails to be helpful -- but you can't have any nerite or mystery (or other) snails in the tank, because the assassins will eat them too.
@@m.hreptilesandmore7913 leeches definitely eat snails. And will kill small fish
Lymnaea stagnalis are your pond snails or they don't like temperatures above 27 degrees and die if you keep the water at 27 degrees or higher for a long time very few survive, but most snail species only become a problem if you feed too much
You mentioned leeches but not the cure? I've got leeches in my shrimp tanks. Any way to get rid of them? I've actually seen them attacking and eating even larger crystal shrimp
The animal that you showed was not a dragonfly larva, but a damsel fly larva. You can tell because it’s gills were external. They’re not quite as bad as dragonfly larva.
5:24 damn and here I am, duckweed in every tank, ramshorn bladder and trumpet snails in every tank, just enjoying their ecosystem services. 😅
I had my endler population decimated by a dragonfly larvae once. Luckily it caught males and babies only. I literally only discovered it when it was grown up and I found it and the pupa it had just left behind. I don’t know whether it came through the window my tank was sitting next to during summer or from plants I bought from an outside holding tank in a garden center. Those are definitely something to look out for.
Generally speaking the safest option is not to introduce anything new to established tanks. Second safest is quarantine, but it’s not really feasible for most hobbyists. I’m lucky, my guppy colony is still alive and thriving after 12 years. I am concerned about genetics, but I also don’t want to introduce non purebred fish to the colony on accident and I certainly don’t want to risk introducing illnesses or parasites.
Those little snails are possibly a species of ramshorn. They get no more than 1/8 inch in diameter and avoid predation by holding their shells flat against the surface they are stuck to.
Yoyo loaches work the fastest to control snails, but pea puffers will do it to but usually not until they get a little older, for the longest time I thought my pea puffers weren't eating snails, then about 4 months after having them I stop noticing any snails on the substrate or glass
i used assassin snails to get rid of ramshorns. had hundreds. they were gone after a month. worked out really well
Fun fact: If you cut a planaria in half or more the parts will regenerate into seperate planarias ending up in even more of them beacuse of thier impressive regeneration abilities and the exact same goes for hydra.
For snails use assassin snail and pull out the big one physically.
For duckweed wash your plants before adding and spent some time removing them physically from your tank as well.
both of this have their usage but you don't actually need them either.
Lol I got into the aquarium hobby to prop duckweed for my pet ducks. It's a great source of niacin that ducks need. Find a friend with ducks duck weed haters😆
for some reason, i cant grow duckweed? i bought some with mini water lettuce months ago and it just cannot take hold in any of my tanks, but i keep pretty high flow in my tanks too with my sponge filters so maybe thats why. even in my low flow tanks my duckweed just dies:( another thing i've been struggling with is algae, cannot grow algae anywhere and lord i just want some green water, i cant even find someone with a colony near me and i'd rather not ship algae. every other plant of mine has taken off ,my ferns are getting gigantic and i need to pull off so many pups with no where to put them
I thought No Planaria kills snails? I used it once and it seemed to do the trick. Since then ive got one rams horn snail in my tank and it hasnt reproduced . I guess you need 2 or more? I also thought snails were hemaphraditic.
Lol. Don't mind any of those snails in my tanks. They eat tons of algae. Also don't mind duckweed. My gold fish tank gets 99% of the duckweed from my other tanks every couple of days and they DEVOUR it! Free food! Love your channel though, bro.
Cannot grow duckweed because I have a good flow on watch surface. Duckweek hates getting wet on top leaves, so you need flow.
I found a dragonfly nymph in my fry grow out tank and it shot chills down my spine. Immediately saved the babies and put the tank outside lol
Is you online fish store able to ship to America?
I had an extremely bad infestation of snails that lived in the substrate of my 6ft aquarium, I had them cause an ammonia spike when the filter couldn't keep up with their waste, I removed all the fish and plants, I dosed the aquarium with sea salt, the had to sift the sand substrate, I removed over half a 10 litre bucket of dead snails, thankfully no more snails! But I still have that bloody green hairy algae!
Really good information, Nick. From what I understand, No-Planaria can also be used for eradicating snails. I just got some on a recommendation for my bladder (pond) snail problem and I'm going to give it a go. I have killed off bladder snails in a tank with just plants and the snails by adding about 2 liters of club soda to about 20 liters of water. I gusess it creates an overdose of CO2 and ultimately suffocates the snails. Seemed to work well with a plant-only quarantine setup. Anyway, just my two cents. Cheers! ~Ron
I love ramshorn, not the micro one. The regular one, it cleans up the tank well for my fry tanks
Bladderwort is actually just a floater plant with little vein like traps that suck up organisms like young daphnia when they swim by it beacuse the traps have a little lid and sensory hair next to it that open the trap when triggered causing a vaccun to suck in the prey where they get digested. Its not a pest and i think its really cool. The thing you mistook bkadderwort for is definetly some type of algae probably related to hair/string algae. Im not quite sure but it might actually be hair/string algae itself but im not sure beacuse there is so many algae species out there.
I had pest bladder snails, I put about 50 guppies in the tank and they ate all the baby snails til there weren't nomore. They didn't kill the trumpet snails
I learned the hard about duckweed....was excited about be a new fish keeper so i asked if i could get some from my lfs...boy did i get a look from him! Lol. Now i know why 😅
swear ive subscribed to you at least 3 times in the last couple months, i hope its just my youtube being stupid and your not losing subs!! got to love youtube lol
I’d take ramshorns over bloody bladder snails any day!
Only positive is my goldfish love them.
I did once use some spider substrate in a tank and ended- up with dragonfly larvae everywhere which sucked, but they were fairly easy to catch…
Like to add another about duck weed is that if you got one in one tank it spreads to all your other tanks
I found one way to get rid of duckweed is to lower the temperature. Once I removed the heater from my guppy tank the duckweed stopped reproducing and eventually went away completely.
I enjoy Ramshorns and pond snails…the trumpet snails, not as much. However, if you don’t over feed, you can keep their population under control.
I really hate limpet snails. Costed me sooooo much time to keep them under control and over 8 years to get really rid of them. My 5 cents to keep snails out of your aquarium is putting new plants in water with alum.
Best pfp😂
What fish is in the bottom right tank?
Bichir 🐟
I started a new tank and purposely started it with all tissue culture plants. Then i lost my mind and bought a beautiful large valisneria that wasn't tissue culture. Just completely forgot. Needless to say, i now have billions of bladder snails- the thing i was trying to avoid. I breed slow eaters in this tank, so i dont want snails in there. 🙄