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I have kept many planted discus tanks over the last 35 years. I started another 25 gal planted tank 4 weeks ago. I intoduced all my plant stock and their attendant snails. No fish. I put into my filter 150 pre-1982 copper pennies and ran my system for 10 days, crushing all the snails as I found them. They showed up smaller and smaller and I stopped crushing them the last couple days to keep track of them. All are gone. I have now done daily 25% water changes and will continue that for 10 days. My plants continue to thrive with the exception of Hemianthus--Baby Tears. Maybe they will return. My plants include:

Red ludwigia
Water wisteria
Brazil drawf sword
Amazon sword
Rotala Magenta
Rotala Indica
Rotalla Wallichii
Hemianthus—Baby Tears
Didiplis Diandra
Dwarf Hairgrass—Eleocharis articularis
Giant Hairgrass—Eleocharis montevidensis
Sagittaris—Dwarf Subulata

This is how I have set up my previous planted Discus tanks. Now I will introduce corys and ottos. Later everything else. This will be a tiger barb tank. I will start with just a few to make shure they won't bother the plants. I don't remember that they do.

I know that there are many posts asking how to get rid of snails. They are extremely copper sensitive. This is how I do it. Now, no new plants.

Using a formula of pennies divided by gallons, the additive effect of the copper day by day became lethal at approx 50 penny-gal-days. I think any other copper accumulation will work about the same. That's 150 pennies divided by 25 gallons times 10 days = 60 penny-gal-days. 10 25% water changes will lower this concentration to 1/10. Another 10 25% water changes will continue to lower it to 1/100.

Dan Kehoe.

why not just buy plants without snails? Why not clean them off before you put them in? Why not have snail eating fish?
-Did you put the copper in with the plants? I thought they were super sensitive to it.

Once the copper gets in the water..you can't get it out.

*Kristin*

Hmmm i used to be snailphobic too, but a while ago i found that small "lemon" snails aren't harmful and actually give the tanks a more natural look, not to mention their wonderful job eating algae and dead leaves, i'm happy with them!

I'll have to agree... A planted tank without a healthy amount of snails just doesn't seem "complete". Snails are a part of nearly all aquatic environments.

I have about seven different species of snails in my tanks, and I'm glad to have them. Snails only have population explosions when the tank is being overfed.

---

I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

I regret buying a Malaysian Trumpet Snail. It's reproduced to the point that whenever I put sinking pellets for my corydoras, the snails have already covered the area in mass numbers, not allowing my corydoras to eat any

Do MTS reproduce asexually? Or do you need two for them to reproduce?

To the best of my knowledge (35+ years experience) copper no matter how small amount can be very dangerous in fish tanks. The problems might be seen straight away but the copper is still there.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

Look here for my
Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

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