Unknown Snail Infestation in my tank

[mistahoo]

I have an infestation of snails. I have no clue what they are. Could anybody help me?

They're all over the tank, glass, filters, etc. Very tiny baby snails right now. I don't have plants and it's a bare-bottom tank aside from three large rocks. Noticed the snails today. Yesterday there wasn't any... No changes to the tank other than a water change. The only snails in my house are nerites, assassins, ramshorn, and one mystery snail. I have a feeling they're ramshorn, but I'm a total snail noob.


Snails on the glass



Snails out of water

[mistahoo]

Here's a few more pics. Sorry for the quality. They're cell phone pics.

[Totenkampf]

they look like baby pond snails to me, they usually come in on plants so thats odd

[mistahoo]

Pond snails? Hmm interesting.. There's nothing in the tank other than those snails. Are they bad? Would puffers eat them?

[Jason]

I've heard rumors of them staying in substrate for the longest time before coming out.

Like people would drain a tank and put the substrate in a bucket and when they used the substrate in a new tank a month later, there would be a snail.

Oh the horror!

[mistahoo]

There was no substrate in the tank for several months. The tank was completely dry and removed of substrate. I recently started up the tank about two months ago as a grow out tank for my dithers and a hospital tank for one of my fish. I didn't notice any pond snails then. They just appeared this morning or possibly last night.

[Totenkampf]

their eggs can lay dormant like the killifish eggs do. puffers would absolutely go nuts on them. they will turn into a plague otherwise. i have some (by this i mean a cloud) in a betta tank that i am observing the effects of assassin snails against them. so far they are too small for the AS to consider them as food. hopefuully they will get big enough to eat before they get mature enough to breed.

[mistahoo]

What do their eggs look like? I made sure I cleaned off the tank before I started it up. If they aren't harmful, I'll just keep them for when I do my planted pea puffer setup.

[Totenkampf]

the eggs must be pretty small, i have never seen them but i have seen newly hatched babies and they are very tiny. did you cycle the tank with filter media from another source? no snail is really harmful unless its diseased, they will reproduce steadily and eat plants though.

[mistahoo]

Yeah I cycled the tank with filter padding from my 100g tank. There's no snails or plants in there. I'll just let them multiply for a future food source for pea puffers!

[TexSun]

Re: Unknown Snail Infestation in my tank

Crush em against the glas for instafishfood!

[mistahoo]

Fish food? For what fish? It's my water tank LOL! I'll just let them reproduce for future puffer food!

[makatak123]

Ohh god! Those are pond snails. If you have plants in there they might eat them.

[mistahoo]

Again, there are no plants in the tank. It is bare bottom and there is only three large rocks in the tank. These guys aren't too bad looking! I prefer these over MTS any day

[makatak123]

Again, there are no plants in the tank. It is bare bottom and there is only three large rocks in the tank. These guys aren't too bad looking! I prefer these over MTS any day

They reproduce like crazy and take over the tank. I feed them crushed up to my fish.