Manuel Arias
Member
The bad news are Snails. Lots and lots of snails. Mostly ramshorn and pond snails. I defeated the ramshorn before but they have seem to come back. It's so bad that they got into my spray bar and blocked the spray holes. Water pressure built up and the tip of my bar came off and now I can't find it . For a week I haven't had much flow in my tank. No algae problems came but that stupid oily film built up. I had to do some DIY to increase the flow. I have to wait for my LFS to have more assassin snails in stock. Right now i only have two.
Good job, Aqua Hero. I think your tank will be very beautiful after some time.
Regarding the snails I got a similar problem, and I used assassin snails too, which will decimate the snails population with the time, but they are not very active, so it will take several weeks until you feel their impact, unless of course you introduce many of them. A practical solution that I did and helps quite a lot is to use a small silicon tube to suction them out of the tank. This of course removes water of the tank, but you can perfectly invest some time during the water changes to remove them in this way. As the pipe is small, you can move it in small spaces as well as avoiding damage to the plants. Be careful however with moss and grass, as if they are not well rooted the suction can be a problem. But beyond that, it works. I have been doing that and you see the difference in few days. It is a bit more of work, but with visible impact.
I also recommend you to pay a look to the filter media from time to time, as I also observed that the filter system (mine at least) absorbs snails that remain alive in the filter media, which can propagate to the tank again later, so cleaning the filter for that also helps, if you observe snails on it.
Hope this help.