Snails

This may be a stupid question, but do snails eat algae? I do not seem to have luck keeping plecos alive for too long, and I'm getting a bit too green in the tank. What snail would you recommend? Thanks.

Like algae eaters, some snail species do a better job or faster than others. I have/like Red Ramshorns in my tanks. They also eat hair and blue-green slime algaes, which a lot of the other species of both fish (algae eaters) and snails won't touch.....Frank

Hi Frank,

Interesting stuff, have you actually seen the Ramshorn eating BGA. Bloody BGA is relentless, no matter what I try, and believe me I've tried, it always comes back I'll put ramshorn snails on my wishlist

Sure have, along with florida flag fish, procatopus, and ameca splendens (butterfly goodeid).......Frank

What kind of environment do the snails need? I got 2 Ramshorns, and they both died within a week. The water supports some yellow labs, gouramis, and tiger barbs. It does have a little bit of aquarium salt (Dr. Fishwells), but not much. Does the theory of salt on a slug hold true to freshwater snails?

Aged water with a pH 7.0 or above.

Yes, but they can tolerate low levels of salt - no copper medications......

OK, so I've had four plecos (the cheapest ones at the shop) in the last year who all died (one from ich, so that doesn't quite count, but you'd think something so ugly would be tougher than that). I've killed two snails now, too. The water is healthy/neutral across the board, except that it's pretty hard. It's a 20 gallon long, houses 3 yellow labs, 3 fire red gouramis, and 2 tiger barbs. The labs and barbs have been in the tank for at least 6 months, and survived the ich outbreak. A couple of cats will soon join the family (pims, or something along those lines). So the big question is: what can I throw in there to keep down the algae and will survive for more than a month?

I'm sure I would be safe saying that at least 80% of fish death in home aquaria is due to water parameters being off and/or quality. So for we know your tank is well established (four plecos in the last year), has 'pretty hard' water, med. sized fish, has algae, and newly added healthy fish die. Most fish from soft or hard waters can live in water that is medium hard (mid scale). One unit dH (degree hardness) =17.8ppm CaCO3. 0 - 4dH, 0 - 70ppm = very soft. 4 - 8dH, 70 - 140ppm = soft. 8 - 12dH, 140 - 210ppm = medium hard. 12 - 18dH, 210 - 320ppm = fairly hard. 18-30dH, 320 - 530ppm = hard, 30 & higher dH = liquid rock.... general hardness (gH) - refers to dissolved concentration of calcium and magnesium ions. You can lower both dH and gH by filtering through peat moss, activated carbon, or use rain water - useing it for your change water will slowly lower the total hardness of your tank.... An aged tank will more than likely have a high level of DOCs, which is an endless supply of nutrients. Putting a pre-filter in the filtering system, and cleaning it everyother day will greatly cut down on the amount of DOCs being pumped back into your tank, which would also cut down on the TDS (total dissolved solids). An aged tank would most likely, also have high levels of TDS, which raises the osmotic pressure. A new fish from a tank with lower TDS - the osmotic pressure quickly changing will destroy the fishs gills, killing the fish.... Weekly water changes/gravel vacs removes nitrates and DOC - the % of water being changed depends upon the amount of food you feed and the amount of fish waste. A weekly 20% water change might be enough for a planted community tank of small fish, but surely isn't enough for a tank full of med. or large fish.... The short of it, add and clean pre-filters, change water/gravel vac more often, and lower the hardness......Frank

Well, newly added fish typically do OK, just not snails or plecos. One thing that concerns me is the consequences of using the peat moss filter - won't it raise the acidity level? Is there a safe way to compensate for that if it does? The hardness comes in at about 200-300 GH. Rainwater - sounds like a great idea if it weren't 10 degrees out, and I'm not going to invest in that much bottled spring water! And I'm guessing river water is going to have the same hardness at my tap water. I will try the pre-filter (available everywhere, I assume) and weekly water changes, though I was doing it every other week before, if not more often.