How NOT to treat vermetid snails. Why gluing vermetid snails is a BAD IDEA!

[Ccote]

Just watched video and didnt hear you or see you show why gluing is bad idea ,so why is it bad idea?

I glued one shut on my hammer and within days all the heads popped off. I was very careful to only get glue over the opening. Somehow me gluing the snail shut caused the hammer to eject all its heads. It was only irritated before I glued from the mucous but now dead

 

[Clueless_Reefer]

Glue didn't work, chemicals didn't work, and very carefully crushing didn't work. Didn't try bumblebee snails. Would see emerald crabs breaking them off and eating once in a while. The thing about crushing them is that if you don't break them off perfectly they just spread more. Female vermitids can have 1000's of babies in their tubes at any point. If you mess one breakoff up you just spread micro babies all over. It was a 10 yr tank only thing I added new was one lfs turbo snail. I had snail qt for a while too.

Yea, that sounds just like how mushrooms are if you don't remove them properly. Honestly, its a little like handling bombs at this point; using the bone clippers and clipping them at the tube base (the roundish part) seems to be the most effective.
Between the two tanks I have 13 bumblebees now; which those guys are just opportunistic eaters - if its easy pray, they're down for it. They're certainly not the answer I would say but they can help with keeping the numbers down in theory if you keep with manual removal.

 

[Clueless_Reefer]

Unfortunate loss just from the past day or so...saw the sweeper tentacle hitting it this morning. I can't be sure I actually found the source as I MAYBE found the base of a couple snails but definitely no tubes. Its really hard to find them when they're just forming their base....

 

[Townes_Van_Camp]

I put three bumble bee snails in yesterday, both went straight to work on those things.

 

[schooncw]

I used to have a reef tank infested with vermetid snails. All over the place, just like my mini feather worms. Out of all seriousness I think people over react to these poor guys, they never bothered any of my corals. But, they did bother the world out of me.

If left, they will multiple and WILL harm corals. Just google the horror stories

 

[mnreefster]

I inherited a tank at the beginning of the year and had a major outbreak a month in. They’re webs can be impressive in large numbers. Brought home 10 or so bumblebee snails and they completely kept them in check and it has worked great. I believe all but a few are still working hard to this day. Population dwindled and I still have some but they are no longer an issue. I have a great clip of one sucking the whole insides out of the shell but having trouble posting the video, I am only getting the audio portion.

 

[LuizW13]

What I want to see or hear is someone that has experienced a tank overran by vermetid snails and what it did to their livestock and/or corals.

I myself do not fret when I see one or a few, same a I don't fret over bristleworms.

Man, let me tell you, I was getting close to being desperate and throwing in the towel. It's crazy how fast these things can spread across the system.
I knew how bad it was really getting after I would stir the sand and blow off rocks to remove detritus, and within seconds my rocks would almost be covered with their webs, almost like Halloween decorations. I could see that it was bothering corals.

Manually removing them just wasn't feasible, their numbers were to large.

What worked for me was doing absolutely nothing. No messing around with the sand, no blowing off rocks, no feeding corals (reef roids, phyto, reef chilli etc). I did very minimal and very careful water changes, to not blow around any detritus. I didn't even clean the glass. The only food introduced to the tank was more meaty foods, like mysis, spirulina brine shrimp, and fauna marine pellets, once a day, if that.

This eventually dropped the nitrates and phosphate to basically zero and brought a plague-like blanket of Dino onto virtually every surface, rocks, sand, and glass. I let that go unattended for like a month

This neglect is what starved them out and 99.9% sure I have killed every single vermetid snail. In hindsight, I probably should have tried a platoon of bumble bee snails, oh well.

I almost killed a couple of corals in the process- I had one fish die towards the very end of my unorthodox treatment, a rainford goby, who I suspect died from eating Dino; it was pretty gross.

I think this was only possible due to me living along in my small apartment during the Great Corona Lockdown. I had no visitors and no wife to pester me about possibly having the "dirtiest" aquarium in the world. ;Dead

Thinking about it now, I guess you could just stop using any filter feeding foods and stop detritus from going into the water column, and dose nitrates and phosphate to prevent the Dinos from taking over. Or, maybe the Dinos were the final punch in eradicating the snails. Maybe one of you can test that theory

Cheers.

 

[Clueless_Reefer]

Here ya go everyone, update video as requested.

 

[LuizW13]

Here ya go everyone, update video as requested.

That really only works for a handful here and there, but it doesn't scale if you have hundreds and thousands all over your scape.

 

[schooncw]

I inherited a tank at the beginning of the year and had a major outbreak a month in. They’re webs can be impressive in large numbers. Brought home 10 or so bumblebee snails and they completely kept them in check and it has worked great. I believe all but a few are still working hard to this day. Population dwindled and I still have some but they are no longer an issue. I have a great clip of one sucking the whole insides out of the shell but having trouble posting the video, I am only getting the audio portion.

I want to see that video!

 

[davidcalgary29]

I was going after my aiptasia (again -- sigh), and put some Aiptasia-X on a few vermetid heads...which then violently expelled the substance (which is more than likely kalk). It killed about 50% of them, which is probably a better ratio than what it does to aiptasia itself.

 

[Omar1107]

i had a bad infestation of vermetid snails, but i introduced around 30-40 bumble bee snails and they took care of the issue for me.