Snails and Pests in Aquarium
Q: Are your plants snail and hydra free?
Even though we do not guarantee our
plants to be free of pests as an
occasional snail does find its way
into the stock but usually our plants
are very clean. They are grown in
controlled environment and are examined
for pests upon packaging. They
satisfy Florida state pest regulations
(that's there the plants are grown).
You may see comments about the plants
made by some of our customers here:
http://www.fishprofiles.com/interactive/forums/thread.asp?id=16780
Q: I am planning on ordering from you
but would like to avoid dealing with
snails if possible. Do your plants have snails on
them and could you tell me something more about these
creatures? I have a 55 gallon tank and intend to keep mostly smaller tetras, corys, dwarf gouramies,
I also plan on using ottociclus (sp?) and Siamise algea eaters for algea control.
Snails are usually always present in
planted aquariums. This happens because of
their reproduction ways - they lay high
number of eggs under the leaves whenever
rich sources of food are around. We try to
examine our plants and remove snail eggs
prior to shipping but it's inevitable that
some eggs are missed, and sometimes only one
survived egg is enough for them to appear -
some snail kinds do not even need a partner
to reproduce.
Snails feed off plants, algae, and fish
food remains. With plants they are actually
going after dying leaves first - those are
softer than the regular leaves. In this way -
cleaning up after fish and plants, -
snails perform sanitary function in aquarium.
Having plants as their natural food it is
possible for snails to overrun aquarium if little
or no fish are present. If you were going to
cycle your tank in fishless manner I would
suggest collecting snails from time to time
until you put fish in. You probably
still would want to do that just for the peace
of mind until your tank is fully stocked.
But in general, in large aquariums like yours
they do not become a problem - there are
too many fish searching for those tasty
snail eggs. Especially proficient in the
search are bottom feeders.
Also, gouramies are known to eat small snails,
and with you planning on having some, your
snails will be a nice addition to their diet.
And of course if you don't think that squashing
an occasional snail and dropping the remains
into the water is too disgusting then your
other fish will thank you for that too 
