snail invasion of a different sort

[Brhino]

First, a bit of history: when I first bought plants long ago, garden-variety pond snails came with them. When they got bad, I bought three assassin snails because that was all the LFS had. For a while I would find lots of pond snail shells but the number of living snails didn't seem to be diminishing, but eventually the assassins started to breed and they overcame the pond snails.

Lately, I've been seeing something new. Tiny snails that appear seemingly from nowhere when the lights are out and then disappear when they're on. There are hundreds of them.


Picture quality's not the best but you get the general idea. There's an adult assassin snail in the middle of the top picture. They like to hang out on the glass and on my mechanical filter media.

My best guess is that these are baby assassin snails. They've got the right shape, you can sort of make out the stripe, and if they were anything else that would mean there are adults breeding somewhere that neither I nor the assassins have found. But, if so, that means at this point I've got an assassin snail infestation that's arguably as bad as the pond snails ever were, which I find sort of funny. What do you think? Assassins, or something else?

[Lady10Godiva]

They do look like the baby malaysian trumpet snails I have. We got them on purpose to breed them as feeders. We started with 20 and have grown up hundreds since the start.

Can you tell if some of the shells have different colors? Ours come in a wide variety of shell colors from black to cream with lots of in betweens.

If it is trumpet snails the adults might all be hanging out in your substrate. But if you can find them your clown loaches would love to eat them.

[bethyMT]

Some MTS are not a bad thing; they do a great job at aerating your substrate and will eat a little bit of algae and excess food. But if it looks like you have a lot, finding the adults and thinning them out sounds like a good idea and a tasty loach treat. You'll have to keep thinning out every few weeks or so, maybe less frequently, once you have MTS it's nearly impossible to get of them.

Do you have planted tank substrate? They might like it if you do, since you prolly don't gravel vac the substrate in the same way that you would gravel. It's nice and safe in there!

[Brhino]

MTS is an interesting possibility, although I have never seen an adult one and I have not added any plants to the tank for over two years. I do have a planted tank substrate and I do not vacuum the gravel, so it's possible they could be hiding down there I guess.

[Loller]

From what I know, assassins breed quite slow and hide in gravel/sand/substrate as a baby. These are most likely not, if they bred so fast, assassins wouldnt be sold for as much as they are now, which is like $1-$4, I beleive.

[Lady Hobbs]

I hear ya loud and clear!!!!!!!!! This is after I see none for several days and then here they come!
I hate them with a passion!!!!!! And if you have not seen my post in another part of the forum I wrote today, I have about 50 assassins, too.

[Brhino]

yup, looks like my tank! So do you know what yours are?

[Lady Hobbs]

I call them trumpets. They are shaped like a trumpet from which the name comes from.

I also call them several other things but none of them that can be printed on a family forum. I feed my fish (and have for years) a small amount each morning. Good luck with that.

[Brhino]

how big do yours get? Are they all just tiny little things or do you have larger ones?

[Lady Hobbs]

The assassins wipe out the bigger ones so I don't see many of those. But these tiny things they don't seem to be able to kill. I may have to move all the assassins out (that I can find) and get a loach of some kind........a herd of yoo-yoo's, I suppose.

Only other thing to do would be to tear the whole thing down, replace all filter media, substrate and soak plants in alum for days and days and hope.