# Good contaminants and bad



## Anonymous (Jan 15, 2005)

Hello all,

For those that haven't been reading the other threads I posted, I've been fertilizing my plants for 2 days, and they're responding exceptionally well.

First the good news. My plants originally came from a farm in Singapore. Apparently, they were culturing java moss and HC in the same vessel. Since I've started using the fertilizer, and stuff is coloring and growing better, I've found HC in the java and water lettuce in the riccia. There are a couple leaves of duckweed also popped up, but those are being pitched out as quickly as I can find them. This part I'm very happy with since that saves me having to order it next week.

And the bad news. I've started finding pond snails in my culture tanks. I fought with these for years when I was keeping plants before, and eventually gave up on plants because of them. It was way too much work trying to manually control the snail population and eventually not worth the time. I've tried to find permanganate and fluebendazole to control them chemically, but nowhere seems to have either. Are there any other chemicals, or sources, that I may be able to use to find something to work. Because of the arrangement of my set-up, using loaches, puffers, or any other fish as control is not an option.

Thanks,

Larry Vires


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## Zoe (Feb 26, 2006)

Are you bent on eradicating them completely?
I have these in all my tanks, and rather than feel like I have to eliminate every single one, I just do my best to control the populations. You may have heard all these methods before, but I'll share them anyway. They work pretty well for me, as I'll see maybe 1 or 2 snails per week (I used to see many, many more).

- Controling their food. What is their food source in the tank; do you have fish in there? Reduce what you feed them; most people overfeed, and the snails will happily feed on what is left, and will reproduce more as a result. Keep their food supply down, and you'll keep the snails' numbers down.

- Manual removal / crushing. My fish love it, and it's easy, so typically I just squish any snails I happen to see against the glass. (Plus it puts a little fear of god into the other snails )

- Trapping / luring. You can get these stainless steel springs on ebay, but a stainless steel spoon works just as well. Take piece of cucumber or zucchini, stick the spoon through it, and let it sink. Since you're a pleco guy this may not work, but theoretically the snails will gather on the piece of cuke overnight, and then you can just chuck them in the morning.

Good luck with em... they're tough to get rid of


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## Anonymous (Jan 15, 2005)

These are plant only tanks. There are no fish, and no food placed into the tanks. The only introduction is the daily dosing of fertilizer and 50% water changes. I definitely feel that they have to be erradicated. I've had too many problems in the past with them, and refuse to deal with them. Rather than to accept them, I would throw the tanks and plants into the dumpster. It may just be my opinion, but because of the damage I've seen to my plants in the past, snails are the scurge of the aquatic world.

In most of my tanks, it would be no problem to place a massive colony of puffers in and slowly pull them out as the food population, aka snails, were eliminated. However, these plants are kept on my patio and have no aeration. Since I've began fertilizing, the plants are growing like mad and everything has been pearling nicely because of the direct sunlight.

I have considered dillution of the plant cultures, cutting small portions and placing them in other tanks till I find one that doesn't produce snails, but that is a very drawn out affair and would intentionally kill several pounds of very nice mosses and floating plants. I'm avoiding that at the moment, but it may be my only option. I usually sell cuttings from my plants as they outgrow their containers, and definitely won't sell anybody anything that is infested.

Any other suggestions will be appreciated.

Larry Vires


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## Damon (Jan 18, 2005)

With no fish, most commercial copper based solutions should be effective. The plants should be fine also. Remember always do waterchanges after treating a tank with any chemicals other than ferts


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## Anonymous (Jan 15, 2005)

A quick update, and something to think about. On a tip I recieved, I stopped dosing aquarium fertilizer for a couple days while treating the tanks, and used an unorthodox method of elimination. Instead of using the copper treatment, I've had poor results with these in the past as well, I started dosing the tanks with miracle grow general houseplant fertilizer at a rate of 6 drops per gallon of tank water per day. This isn't anywhere near the quality of fertilizer, but apparently has a very fast effect on snails. 

The day after the first dose, I only found 4 snails in the 8 tanks. Those that I did find had shells that were softer than fish eggs, and crushed while I was trying to pull them from the tank. I am going on 3 days now, and haven't seen any more snails. I'm going to continue this till Friday and hope that it will have enough effect to kill all the snails and eggs. I wouldn't recommend this for fist tanks because ammonium nitrate is the primary ingredient, but could be a feasible "bath" to eliminate snails from individual plants that are being picked apart. I'll update after I know more about how this is going to work.

Larry Vires


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## Damon (Jan 18, 2005)

Miracle grow contains ammonia. Be careful as this will lead to grenwater, hair algae, and possibly clado.


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## girth vader (Apr 24, 2006)

I'm a little old school, but I use a penny. I'm not sure when your American mint switched from copper, I think in the early 80s, I'm sure I can google it and find out, but that helps irradicate snails for me and it doesnt harm the plants or livestock.

Ziggy.


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## Anonymous (Jan 15, 2005)

I just got back after being at the hospital for 2 days for the birth of my third. I definitely found algae, but believe that the plants should be able to out-compete it once I get them back on a normal fertilizer schedule in the morning. For the time being, I've changed out the tanks completely and sterilized them to cut down on the number of algal cells. As a note, as I said earlier, I wouldn't recommend this treatment. However, when moving the plants to sterilized tanks, I did not find the first snail. It did kill them off, but now I have to fight the algae back.

Larry Vires


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