Tank Doing Great...Snails totally out of control

"NetMax" wrote in message
...

Jeff, many of the well-intentioned clerks giving advice in pet shops do
not
even own now, or ever, an aquarium. Try to keep that in mind.


Good example was tonight, we have two Petsmarts in our town and I went to
the one I normally dont go to. The girl asked me what I wanted and I said
"Two Neon Tetras, one female black molly, one male orange molly, two clown
loaches". She got the two Tetras out and went for the Black Molly. When she
got it out she asked me if it were male or female. She said she didnt know
how to tell the difference. And instead of getting out one species, bagging
them and getting the next, she started putting them all in the same bag. I
told her to go ahead and put the fish back, I didnt want them. There was
also a dead Orange Molly floating around in the Molly tank. (People here
told me not to buy fish from a tank with dead fish floating around in it).
The lady didnt know anything about fish AT ALL and was working Petsmarts
Fish section. Lesson learned.

Jeff wrote:
"NetMax" wrote in message
...

Jeff, many of the well-intentioned clerks giving advice in pet shops do

not

even own now, or ever, an aquarium. Try to keep that in mind.



Good example was tonight, we have two Petsmarts in our town and I went to
the one I normally dont go to. The girl asked me what I wanted and I said
"Two Neon Tetras, one female black molly, one male orange molly, two clown
loaches". She got the two Tetras out and went for the Black Molly. When she
got it out she asked me if it were male or female. She said she didnt know
how to tell the difference. And instead of getting out one species, bagging
them and getting the next, she started putting them all in the same bag. I
told her to go ahead and put the fish back, I didnt want them. There was
also a dead Orange Molly floating around in the Molly tank. (People here
told me not to buy fish from a tank with dead fish floating around in it).
The lady didnt know anything about fish AT ALL and was working Petsmarts
Fish section. Lesson learned.


One PetSmart near where I work has a surprisingly good fish section.
The manager understands how to run a commercial fish system and there
are a few competent aqarists working there. The rest are dog and cat
people, but they can net a fish if you point at the one you want.

I wouldn't go there for advice, but I don't mind going there for fish
and cheap supplies. YMMV - I guess I'm just saying don't rule out all
PetSmart stores (PSMV?).

--
Elaine T __
http://eethomp.com/fish.html '__
rec.aquaria.* FAQ http://faq.thekrib.com

The same is true of PetCo. Although the selection is minimal, I have had
excellent livestock from one *particular* store.

Jeff wrote:

I was going to put in 2 Clown Loaches but was told by Pet Smart I
couldnt do that because they are semi aggressive and would kill all the fish
in my Community Tank. The snails are on the glass, in the rocks, on the
plants (Live and artificial), they are everywhere.

Snails in the tank are actually a good thing, as they turn over the sand
and eat left-overs. However, if there are too many left-overs (i.e., if
you are overfeeding) they multyply and can get unsightly. Feeding less
is often the only measure required, but it takes a while until numbers
get down. If you don't want to wait, you can collect the snails by hand
and remove them. If crushed, they are readily eaten by many fishes.

Loaches are very social animals and should be kept in groups of at least
6 (although I have seen them showing typical behaviour also in a group
of 4). Clown loaches, which can grow up to abeut 30 cm (1 ft) thus
require a tank of 200 l (50 gal) or more. However, there are _Botia_
species which stay much smaller, eat snails and show behaviour similar
to clown loaches (_B. macracanthus_): _B. lohachatu_, _B. kubotai_ and
_B. striata_ all stay smaller than 12 cm (5"), so decent group sizes can
be achieved even in relatively small tanks. Especially _B. striata_
seems to have quite a few friends in this newsgroup.

I have never seen loaches kill other fish, although they may (like most
other fishes except the pure vegans) feed on cadavers.