AlgaeIsYum

The cause and solutions to shell erosion in snails is actually very simple. Shell erosion is caused by water that is too low in pH (also normal wear and tear but that's not controllable). More specifically when it's below the calcium carbonate saturation index which is influenced by pH. The threshold for this fluctuates depending on other variables like temperature but generally the conditions in a home aquarium leave it around 7.6. When the pH drops below this threshold, the water pulls calcium carbonate out of the shell. A snail's shell is ~98% calcium carbonate and the lower the pH, the faster it's pulled out. The only solution to this is to increase your pH to reach the saturation point. Diet has very little to do with it. It would only affect new shell growth and as long as you're feeding a reasonable diet, it rarely is much of an issue. This may be true but doesn't have any outcome on the snail shells. Firstly the shells are just calcium carbonate, they can never be more/less resistant to the water chemistry. Genetic selection also doesn't apply here as it would require most snails to die and the only ones to reproduce are those that survive low pH. 7 is nowhere low enough for that and I doubt breeders are raising snails in pH of less than 5 so only a handful survive. Shell erosion also isn't the doom and gloom that many people seem to think. It's actually not detrimental to the snail unless it erodes to the point where it exposes flesh. I've raised many snails in ~pH 7 and they do get some erosion on their shells but all live long lives to die in old age. It's generally more detrimental to our aesthetic pleasure than it is to the snail.

With a pH of 9 and super high gH and kH, it's going to be insanely difficult to significantly move your pH down by adding anything other strong acids (would not recommend this, potentially deadly). On top of this, everytime you add water you'll need to counter that highly basic water again. Tannins and humic acid (what makes up the sphagnum moss) are relatively weak so won't do too much. I think your only real option is going for RO water.

I don't think you can draw any meaningful conclusions from this experiment unless you add no plants or livestock, do no water changes, only add distilled/RO water (to ensure you're not adding nitrates) and add a controlled amount of ammonia constantly. Plants will take up ammonia/nitrates, water changes will remove nitrates, having livestock means you need to feed them so you're adding variable amounts of nitrogen + the fish assimilate some of that, mulm builds up which locks nitrogen in solid form etc. With the whole system being that complex, it's pretty much impossible to attribute an effect to any one particular thing.

I don't know this anoxic filtration system described by Dr. Novak but these systems are actually very well understood in the sewage treatment industry where they need to optimize the whole process to keep costs down. You can look at what they've learnt to understand what you need to make it work efficiently. E.g. here's a somewhat digestible form of it https://www.meatinstitute.org/index.php?ht=a/GetDocumentAction/i/48700 If you look at the problems section, there are a couple of points there that I think would make it difficult in a home aquarium: Low recycle rate - to be effective the whole system needs to be a closed where the water is constantly recirculated (between the anoxic chamber and the preparation chambers). To get to 80% nitrate -> nitrogen gas conversion rate, they need a 400% recirculation rate. Keep in mind this is commercially optimized equipment and system so for home aquariums, you'll likely have to seriously up the recirculation % to make up for it. Even if you got anywhere near that, you're still not getting all the nitrates out. Oxygen carryover from aerated zone - this is the concern that @HH Morant has. Pumping water in brings oxygenated water. To remove that, they add an organic food source, looks like typically an alcohol, so that heterotrophic bacteria can consume it and use up the oxygen in the normal respiration process. It takes time for the bacteria to consume the oxygen which is why they have a couple of chambers before to allow that to happen. It'll be interesting to see what happens but looking at the numbers this industry is doing, I feel any home system would just be insanely inefficient, leaving a bunch of nitrates you still have to deal with. Or any home system that can do it semi-efficiently would be insanely complex to build and maintain.

Yeah moss is virtually indestructible. There's even a very valid strategy nicknamed 'sushi moss' where you put moss on a cutting board and chop it down really finely like you would some herbs. Then you glue this on to wood/rock and it'll grow out faster as there are now many, many tiny plants.

Larger fish from aggressive families like cichlids and gouramis can attack/harass snails and shrimp. Whenever there's a risk like that I like to have a plan B before getting them. This usually is getting a small number to test out first and having another safe tank I can move them to if it doesn't work out. You can also ask your fish store if they'll take them back if it turns out they won't work out. The bioload of shrimp is definitely lower than fish. I've read around 5-10 for an equal length fish but that's mostly guesswork. Snails vary a bit, apple snails like mysteries tend to get fairly large and can have larger bioloads but still less than a similar sized fish. Typically pH isn't overly important but keeping snails is one situation where it can be. Their shells are mostly made of calcium carbonate which tends to start dissolving at <7.6 pH in home aquarium environments. Any pH neutral and above is fine but below that and they can run in to serious shell erosion problems. I know a lot of people like to keep angels in more acidic water so you'll want to think about that if you want snails. If you do want snails @CalmedByFish advice on thinking about what you want the snails for is the best way to go. They all tend to suit different needs for a tank.

@HH Morant Thanks for sharing aquariumscience.org and what they found on filter media in the hobby. It's so hard these days to know exactly what the best product for anything is when so much advertising is incredibly biased. For my next tank I'll get some 30 ppi poret foam.

@BlueLineAquaticsSC I'm glad to hear you enjoy the app and find it useful. This is exactly why I made it.

@Marcy Thanks, I'm always up for sharing my geekiness on snails!

There are so many Anubias varieties with such a wide range of forms out there these days, a lot of them still very new and rare. I just recently learnt about Anubias 'jalapeño' and Anubias 'stardust', both look beautiful. Also some hybrid species varieties popping up as well.

It depends on what you're keeping. Fish are largely spared the effects of hydra as they mostly stay in open water. Animals that need to mostly move on surfaces like many inverts will suffer from a large hydra population. A hydra sting doesn't do any permanent harm to them but you can see it physically bothers them as they recoil from the touch. I assume it'd be like when we get static shocks, annoying when you get one but pretty stressful if you are constantly getting them. If you don't keep things like shrimp and snails and you only have fish you probably needn't worry.

I don't have any myself but I'd love to get some Anubias pangolino sometime. The tiny size just makes it adorable.

@xXInkedPhoenixX I guess I'm a bit of a sadist, I love knowing how much I spent on my tank even if it horrifies me! It's also good motivation to not be lazy and keep it well maintained.

@CalmedByFish Wow, those words fill me with warmth. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it. It is very peaceful and I often just plop down in front of the tank and watch it to zone out. I know we're all mostly doing our tanks for ourselves but I can't think of greater praise for our work than someone else wanting to see our tanks more than once! I did get inspiration for this simple diorama tank from a local national park I sometimes go to. The front right of the tank is meant to signify transition to a lake with more reed like plants. The plants at the back represent different types of forests at the base of the mountains. I feel like I did a pretty decent job of translating that to my tank. @Taco Playz Thanks for the welcome and I'm happy to hear you're enjoying the app! Your avatar is hands down the coolest I've seen on here so far.

I think it'd be nice to go for some vertical stem plants in the back to add a bit of height to your tank. If you're after some slower growing, smaller ones Rotala indica and Bacopa monnieri 'compact' are great. The former will add slight reddish tones, the latter will be bright, fresh green.

I've actually created an an aquarium management app, you can log parameters in there plus a lot more. It's also available on iOS and free so check it out if you're still interested in one. https://www.aquahome.app/

This definitely looks like a trumpet snail (Thiaridae family). It doesn't look like an MTS though, whilst they can get bigger they don't get this big and their cone tends to segment closer to the top, is thinner and tapers off sharper. I think this might be a Thiara scabra, in the first photo I think I see a circular row of white protrusions that this species has. It's hard to say without clearer, closer up photos but maybe you can check against it yourself to confirm if it looks just like it

The softer and mushier the food, the easier it is for shrimp and snails to eat and the more they'll enjoy it. I don't mind letting uneaten food sit in the tank and soften up. I only take it out when it starts molding but I generally know my tanks really well and have gotten really good at feeding just the right amount so this doesn't happen often. There are some ways you can make it better. One is by breaking up the food in to smaller pieces. More surface area means it softens up faster in water and the animals find it more manageable. I also spread the food around the tank so they all have a bigger chance to bump in to some food. You can boil, it's fine to do so and I do it too. Boiling does lose some of the nutrition from food but unless you're boiling for a long time it's not that significant. You can also feed more food that is already soft by nature. I feed a lot of frozen peas/corn and leafy greens. Instead of boiling, another technique you can use is to let the food start to expire (but not mold) then freeze it. Once you thaw it, it'll be soggy and soft and you can feed it straight like that without boiling.

Thanks for the welcomes! @Solstice_Lacer Yeah that's very common in some countries like the US. The Irish did a lot of emigrating back then. @DaveO That's Litorella uniflora growing in the front (included pics below for all the plant species I'm using here). It's definitely a very unique looking plant in the hobby, it's got thick succulent needle leaves. It's also pretty undemanding but not very common in the hobby unfortunately. I'm trying to grow a monte carlo carpet in between it but between only running low levels of CO2 and the snails uprooting it, it's taking a looot of patience.

Hey fellow fish nerms, Glad to finally join up here, there's not much of a scene here in Ireland for the hobby sadly. Thankfully we have the internet these days so I can at least enjoy the hobby virtually with all the people on it. I have a pretty insatiable appetite for knowledge in the hobby so looking forward to sharing and learning a lot with everyone! At first I was all about the fish but I got myself fascinated by inverts, particularly snails and have ended up a bit of a super nerd on them. I've also been really taken by the aquascaping scene lately and I'm already planning out all the ideas I want to build. I know you all want to see cool pics so here are some of my main tank. Tried to scape something before I knew how to scape something so it's a constant WIP as I slowly improve it. You can see my spixi snails and a bunch of neos living happily in there. The snails certainly like to make life hard by uprooting my plants for me. Guess they're just trying to help by giving me more planting practice! Oh and I'm also the guy behind AquaHome! (https://www.aquahome.app/) When I started off in the hobby, I tried to look for an app to help me with the hobby but honestly, none of the current ones were satisfactory to me. So I ended up building it, a companion app for the hobby to help people manage and learn about everything. We're constantly improving it so if you're interested do check it out!