The Puffer Forum

I recently got a much bigger tank for my Ceylons, and so I'm in the process of taking my other tank down. I initially removed most of the brackish water, and then I added back in some fresh water so I could do a bit of cleaning. The tank is about half full of water, but there's no lights, no heater or filter running anymore. The odd thing is that I noticed that a massive amount of Malaysian Trumpet snails have appeared from nowhere in that tank!
Now, if that had been a freshwater tank I don't think I would have been so surprised, but as it wasn't, I'm wondering where those snails have come from?
I didn't think snails and salt mixed well .... so how could they be in there? And they must have been there otherwise how could such a big amount appear over- night?
I'm not sure what to do with them either. If I try to take them out that's going to be quite a job because there's hundreds of them, maybe more, and they range from very tiny to an inch or so. I just thought it was very odd, only because it was a brackish tank.
Anyone know why I've got a MTS invasion in my old Ceylon tank?

sell em on ebay!

Brakish water is the best for snail breeding. From my research most snails move to brak water to reproduce

Okay, that might be ... but where did they come from? They weren't visible all the time that the Ceylons were in there, and I never put any in there. Just seems odd that now that there's no heat, no filter and nothing to eat, all these snails have appeared from nowhere!

http://theaquariumwiki.com/Melanoides_tuberculata

I also read on another forum of one person haveing a brackish tank and after years of haveing loaches in the tank he hadnt seen any but soon after retanking the loaches he saw tons of them.

MTS are substrate dwellers most of the time, and pop up only if really tempting foods emerge. 10x so if they are eaten by puffers when they surface. My guess is the change in conditions resulted in extra activity form the snails. My larger puffers glom MTS without trouble, but as they are thick shelled snails by anyones measure, it's best to feed small ones for the size of your puffers or not feed them at all. Marine puffers/high brackish seem to be better able to determine if a snail is too tough for them IME, while freshwater or low brackish puffers may be less able to judge.

Melanoides tuberculata can live in up to about half-strength seawater, so they generally do perfectly well in brackish water aquaria.

Now, if they suddenly appear on the glass, it's important to consider why they're doing that. By default these snails are almost entirely nocturnal and they rarely emerge from underneath the substrate during the day. A few may appear, but it's just a small percentage of the total population. So if you suddenly see lots and lots of them on the glass, it's possible that the snails are stressed. When oxygen concentration drops for example they climb to the surface to breathe air (or at least use the well-oxygenated surface water layer). Likewise, rapid changes in pH can cause a similar reaction.

I've observed on more than one occasion a mass exodus of Melanoides shortly before some sort of aquarium crisis. Yet another reason why these snails are a blessing, not a pest.

Cheers, Neale

Awww... now you're making me feel sorry for these snails. You see, the aquarium they are in isn't being used right now. I've just got some water in it because I was cleaning it, but I suppose I should try and get those snails out before they all die, although there's a good few hundred of them I would guess.

I just thought it odd that I'd never seen them before and can't think how they even came about to be in that tank in the first place!