new: mts and gravel

This may look impulsive, but I've been thinking about it for a long time actually. Decided to quit gravel vacuuming and get malaysian trumpet snails. They eat algae, diatoms, leftover fish food, break down fish poop and best of all, dig through the substrate aerating it. If you get too many should be able to control them by simply feeding the fish less- they only overpopulate when there is excess food available. And the pet store is happy to get rid of them- I got five for free.

They are livebearers. If you have just a male, no extra snails. A female can make clones of herself without a mate. I don't think they can change their sex (some snails do). And they are very good water quality indicators. Case in point: I rarely change out the filter media in my HOB. I do rinse it every other week in tank water to remove some debris but although the package recommends changing out the filter out once a month, I think I've done it twice in five months. I just hate to throw away the filter media pad, full of all that beneficial bacteria. In fact, I usually cut the media off the plastic framework, rinse off the carbon particles (with dechlorinated water) and stuff the media back into the HOB behind the new one, so that I don't loose part of my bacteria colony. I've got two old filter pads back there now, not much room for more but next time I'll just toss the oldest one and not feel so bad about it. Plus they are always there ready to seed a new tank! (this seems to have worked with my 10gal- it's been over a week now and the water still tests at safe levels- zero ammonia and nitrites, 10-20 nitrate).

But this was about snails. So I got the trumpet snails. Noticed when I put them in the big tank, they were hanging at the water line, not descending or digging through the gravel like I expected.

Then I noticed water is coming out of the filter overflow- which happens when the media gets clogged. I saw it starting to do this last week and had rinsed out the filter pad. Today I replaced it (cutting out and saving the media like before). As soon as the filter was running with the new part, the fish were dancing all over the place (zebra danios especially) and the snails immediately began descending the wall

and doing this!

So now I guess I'll have more. Maybe this was a mistake. But that's what this blogging journal is about, so I can remember and learn from my mistakes.... I've only got one trumpet snail in the little tank. I don't want to overpopulate the smaller space. And if it dies (their lifespan is usually year) I can just add another one from the big tank, as it looks like they'll be copying themselves soon enough.

Oh, and I added a small layer of gravel to the 10gal as well. Finally found a type I like the looks of- fine grain (could call it coarse sand just as easily as fine-grain gravel) and an overall dark brown hue. It looks just right. I added backdrop that had been taken off the big tank (don't plan to put a backdrop on that one because I hope the plants will fill in and screen it eventually).

Why did I change my mind again? Well, I went back and read advice I'd received when I was thinking of making Hector's tank bare-bottom. Decided the benefits of a gravel bed outweigh other things. Plus the novelty of a glass bottom was palling on me. And- I don't like looking at snail poo all over the bottom. They poop a lot! I do think now that the skull looks awfully artificial in there. Eventually I want to replace that with something natural-looking that has fissidens (phoenix moss) growing on it- but for now I don't want to get rid of Flash's cave yet. He's still hanging in there.