Laurie,

Who told you they could carry flukes. There is only
one fluke species where a snail is a secondary host and
this occurs regional in the mountainous regions of the
Northwest, and requires a specific species of snail for
it to occur, so unless you live in the mountains of
Washington or Oregon state, I doubt if you got flukes
from a snail. Most of the flukes that bother Goldfish
have nothing to do with snails as intermediate hosts.

Snails can get bacterial infections, but chances are if
they have a bacterial infection they got it from your
fish, which can carry diseases and will only show up
when the fish becomes stressed, which is why it is
important to quarantine fish a month before adding them
to your local population of fish and during this month
you and do a pre-treatment of drugs on the fish to get
rid of the buggers.

If you are actually worried about this you need to take
the fluke or the suspect infect fish to the lab to get
it analyzed professionally than trying to get guesses
from the internet. A good microscope can also see the
little buggers also, but let me say, that very few
diseases in aquariums or ponds are transmitted via
snails and it is only via very rare cases that it is seen.

You need to get the "Fancy Goldfish" Book by Rick Hess
and Dr. Johnson. It is very informative and actually
has picture to help identify problems.

HTH

Tom L.L.
------------------------------------

Dark Phoenix wrote:

"Chris Oinonen Ehren" wrote in message
...

I wouldn't call them mystery snails, since that term is usually associated
with apple snails, and I doubt an apple snail (usually about the size of a
cherry or bigger) came in on your plants without you knowing.

Regarding your stowaway snail: Why don't you just squish it? As you

become

aware of more of them, you can squish them, too.

Sounds like you are worried about them being carriers of some kind of
disease--if that is the case it is too late for removing those plants to

do

you any good. (Can an animal carry parasites while still in the egg?) I'd
wait and see if any more snails appear. That might have been the only

one.

You don't want to tear everything apart "just in case"--that won't do your
fish any good.

I believe there is some kind of chemical dip you can use on new plants so
that no snails/eggs survive on them, but I can't remember the name of it.
Might want to use something like that in the future.



Hmm... we know what apple snails are; why are they called mystery snails?
And no, these aren't apples or ramshorns.

I do squish them- well, I take the out and toss them to the chickens. Little
escargot treat. I'm just tired of thinking I've got the tank de-eviled, and
then finding... more of them. Are these things born pregnant??? Have babies
while they're still invisible to the naked eye??? Until I found out they
could carry flukes, and thus be a probable cause of the bacterial infection
I'm still fighting after two months, I was leaving them to cruise the algae.
They made neat patterns in it.