Snail tank cycling

[Cheltgirl]

I’ve got the idea in my head of using our ridiculously small 9 litre tank that can’t be used for anything else as a snail tank.

I’ll get it setup and running and let it build up some biofilm before adding snails but should I properly cycle it? (I would just get a bit of sponge from one of our other filters to save time) or can I just put new sponge in the filter and go from there?

Having done many full cycles the snails that have hitchhiked have always been fine so not sure?!

Thoughts please?


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[Annie]

Good question !
We are cycling The Kremlin but there are snails already in and doing Ok.

Not any posh ones of course hehe

[Jota]

What kind of snails? If it's just those pond snails you get as unwanted visitors on plants then they can handle it. If it's fancy snails I'd probably do a cycle with an air filter using a sponge from a mature tank to make it quicker.

[Cheltgirl]

It would definitely be some fancy ones (got plenty of hitchhikers in other tanks) I have a little filter I can use. It only holds a tiny bit of sponge so none of the other filters will miss it.

I suppose dosing some ammonia for a week or 3 won’t hurt and will give the biofilm a chance to build up a bit. I was just hoping to avoid having to do a cycle out of sheer laziness and having to get the stinky ammonia out again




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[Gingerlove05]

Why not just take a small portion (for snails it probably would be tiny!) of media from your established filter and test it with 1ppm ammonia (or less maybe?), it should help speed up the cycle if it needs to cycle at all.
I’ve done it when moving fish into QT, just taken a small amount of media from my filter to “cycle” the QT filter, without any issues.

[Jota]

I imagine these snails wouldn't produce a high, medium or even a low bioload anyway (when compared to fish) so doing a fishless cycle to create a bacteria level that could cope with 2ppm ammonia is moot because your snails will never get anywhere near that level and so any bacteria population you establish will die out due to lack of a food source (ammonia) once cycled.

Maybe just add media from and established tank and get the snails in from day one and just be careful to remove uneaten food like courgettes or whatever you feed them on after a few hours.

[Cheltgirl]

Yes I will be taking some media from elsewhere so it won’t take ages. I just didn’t want to be dosing ammonia for a couple weeks while building up the biofilm.

I suppose I could run the filter empty to start with leave a light on for a week then put media in the filter when it’s a bit gunked up? Theoretically I’d only have to dose a tiny bit of ammonia for a couple of days then just to make sure?

Does that sound sensible?


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[Cheltgirl]

A very quick google says that snails either produce hardly any waste so it’s no extra bioload on a filter (or minimal) or they are massively messy and will ruin your tank so errrr



I’ve only had snails in tanks where there has been some other life form as well never on their own so hence the confusion




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[Jota]

Was looking at Mystery Snail guide and they recommend 5 gallons per snail.

[Cheltgirl]

[quote="Jota" pid='20882' dateline='1551795945']
Was looking at Mystery Snail guide and they recommend 5 gallons per snail.
[/quote]


That’s over 20 litres?! Hmmm. Mystery snails can get pretty big I suppose.

I was thinking of a nerite or 2 another batman snail and maybe something else. Not totally decided yet.


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