Snails for cleaning substrate????

[bjb]

Looking for advice
I keep Lake Malawi chichlids.
Thinking of adding some snails to help clean substrate.  One tank has sand bottom - I've read that Malaysian Trumpet Snails (MTS) are good at cleaning sand.
The other tank has gravel.  It's this tank that could use some help.  Detritus tends to collect between stones and vacuuming is impossible - so many rocks.
Currently I have powerheads that I run for about 1hour each day to suspend the detritus, then I clean the filter right after, but I'd like to get the nitrates lower.
Any thoughts/advice would be appreciated.

Barry

[Xander]

The thing about snails eating detritus is that, what goes in, must come out. They absolutely will eat the fish waste and the excess food that makes it to the bottom, but these will simply be converted to an equal amount of much smaller and finer wastes. This means that your nitrates won't be affected. The same amount of ammonia is still being produced and converted. It also might change how you go about cleaning your substrate! For the better or for worse, is for you to decide.

It can also somewhat tempt fate to add MTS to a tank with large rocks, if those rocks aren't very permanently set into place somehow. Similar to the cichlids who dig in substrates, their movements in the gravel can, over time, upset the balance of some rocks which then roll and smash into the glass of your tanks. Not common, but absolutely devastating!

That being said, the MTS are incredibly good at what they do. They get to everything you'd miss, they tend to disappear in the daylight and not be as visible as other pest snails, they turn your substrate about and release potentially dangerous bacteria pockets before they can build up...

But they procreate based on the food source available to them, and I have seen at least one tank before where the substrate had been nearly tripled in depth based on the MTS population in their tank, and the wastes they've left behind.

Just some things to consider!! The benefits of the snails to one person may be the downfalls of the snails to another person. You will want to understand the outcome, and what that means for you, before you decide to add any sort of live anything-control into your tanks!

[bjb]

Thanks Xander.
More to think about.
I'm thinking that the movement of the snails through the substrate may cause wastes to find their way into the water column and ultimately be removed by filtration rather than complete conversion to nitrate, which is harder to remove. Does that make sense??

[Andre]

Also keep in mind if you add salt to your tank. Snails don't like salt

[bjb]

I have African cichlids, so no salt

[Xander]

Jun 25, 2017 22:44:58 GMT -5 bjb said:

Thanks Xander.
More to think about.
I'm thinking that the movement of the snails through the substrate may cause wastes to find their way into the water column and ultimately be removed by filtration rather than complete conversion to nitrate, which is harder to remove. Does that make sense??

I'm not sure their actions would be quick enough to jostle the wastes. It seems more likely to me that it would just settle further in.