If they are very small and brown, they are probably pest snails, or similar asexual snails that hitched a ride on the new plants from the store. It seems like you've only got a few, but since they are asexual, they will reproduce exponentially and take over your tank. Squish them if you see them. Don't use any snail pesticides because most are harmful to other life in your tank. Take care of them now before there are too many to get rid of without drastic measures.

Do not be tempted to use a "snail-away" product like hippy said. Those products can sometimes kill your biofilter and your plants and possibly fish. Snails and plants go hand in hand. At first they tend to infest your tank. After a while the population will go down. They are harmless other then the fact some tend to get caught up in your filter. I usually get just small pond snails, about the size of a pinhead. They don't do much harm to filters. I did get a bunch of plants that had apple snail eggs on them that hatched. I let my clown loaches at them. If you plan on getting a 55G or larger tank one day then I would get 3 small clown loaches. The loaches will keep the snail population almost unoticeable.They get to be up to 12". They do grow slowly though, about 1/2" or less a year. Some LFS will take larger ones back for trade but I see fewer shops doing that now. Another alternative is wilt a piece of lettuce and anchor it at the bottom of the tank with a rock. The next morning before the lights come on discard it with the attached snails. By the way what kind of plants did you get?

IME if you are not overfeeding pond snails will not be a problem, niether will ramshorns. Small snails can live in harmony with your plants.

Next time try disinfecting your plants before introducing them to the tank. Know one has to live with snails in their tank! A solution of 12 parts water 1 part 5% bleach for 15 seconds (followed by lots and lots of rinsing and dechlorinating) works okay for some plants, but Potassium Permanganate crystals work much better and are less harmful to plants. Just dissolve a few crystals in a bucket until a nice pomagranate color then add the plants for 15 minutes or so and rinse well. You can not disinfect thin-leaved plants like anacharis with bleach.

By disinfecting you kill all or nearly all snails and all parasites and other illnesses that could get your fish sick.

:)

It could be that you have perfectly harmless snails. Not all snails are asexual, and if they're very small, they wouldn't be able to reproduce yet anyway. Some snails will actually starve to death before eating a live plant. I would probably quarantine them to be on the safe side, but it could be that you've got a nice pet for free. If they would eat your plants, a pet store might take them to sell to someone without plants, so I think killing them right away is a little harsh.

What exactly do they look like? Is the shell spiked, round, flat, or oval-shaped? How big and what color(s) are they?

As an alternative/addition to disinfecting new plants, quarantining them is also a good idea.

Call me paranoid, but with new plants, I treat with the KMnO4, qt for 5 days, then treat one more time before planting. Some types of parasites lay eggs that are totally untouchable by bleach or KMnO4, so I treat twice to be sure. You really gotta watch for parasites that ride home on plants, especially if fish are kept with the plants at the store.

Okay I guess not all snails are bad :P Members of the apple snail family are often kept as pets, can not reproduce by themselves, but do eat plants like its a salad bar (except brigs). These genereally do not come from plants though. Malaysian Trumet Snails (cone shaped snail)don't eat plants don't eat plants and are important to keep if you've got sand in your tank, but are asexual and you often need to contol their numbers every once in a while. Ramsorns (spiral shell) don't normally eat plants, but may need population control later down the road too. Common pest snails (full grown at 1/2 cm with a speckly brown football shaped shell) will eat your plants and reproduce like no tomorrow. If you don't have a loach or other snail eater, its possible for the tank to become completely over run. After that, the only real way to get rid of them is to do a complete clean out: Remove fish, treat the plants, boild decorations, and wash everything else with bleach. Your cycle will be ruined and you have to start over. Sorry if its a little extreme but its just my opinion because I've heard of sail infestions getting this bad. Just a friendly warning :)

alright, to all your questions-

woeisme- sry, i canÂt remember the names of the plants, i think one is a lily something, and the others are like achnaids or somethings. sry i canÂt remember the names!

uninformed kitty- they are small, about a third of my pinky nail. they are brown, and the shells are round with maybe a tiny spiral

thanks for all ur help, i think iÂm just going to squish it or feed it to my betta. : )

Feed them to your betta if you can. I feel horrible killing things just because they are there. The only animal I kill intentionally are the pest snails. My reasoning and consolation is that if I get rid of them now, I won't have to kill many more later down the road. I'm not a psycho killer I swear. I even catch the scorpions in my house and let them go elsewhere :)

By feeding them to your betta at least they won't be entirely killed needlessly. They'll make a good meal.

I agree, feeding things to other things always makes me feel better about their deaths. It gives their life some meaning.

recalling my experience with snail infestation...

It started with only 1 and it ended with hundreds.. a tiny snail hitched on one of the plants I had just bought from the petstore and it grew, pretty soon it multiplied and multiplied. Within a year I had hundreds more than I can squish/pick whatever.... I made many into fertilizers for outdoor plants - fed some to ants -- no avail. They kept coming and coming. Until one day, finally I;ve had it. I removed all plant materials and disposed them because they probably carried snail eggs (only the large types I kept like anubias), transferred the fish to the hospital tank and bleached the tank (55 gal.) and also the filter. I knew it was very drastic but after a year of trying, this was the last resort. I couldn't believe the number of dead snails that began showing up. After that I took the gravel and rinsed them out several times over several days. I haven't had a contamination since. I bought a cannister filter and started the tank once more. Saved part of the old aquarium water to help reestablish the helpful bacteria. My new plants are bought from stores that do not have infestations and also a briefly rinses in a weak bleach/water solution.

Ianna

The link below was very helpful and in my case identical. Read the entire thing before coming to any conclusions. IMO and IME the small snails or pond snails are very helpful. They only infest when there is an abundance of food. I look at these little snails as an indicator that something is not right if an infestation breaks out. Either my ferts aren't balanced or overfeeding. I have only one tank now with fish and plants, and 2 plant only. Since my clown loaches are in that tank I have had trouble with algae growth on the leaves of the plants. They are not totally wasted, but deffinately not as vibrant as normal. I got into trouble by not dipping a plant that I bought from a local Petsmart (stupid me). I have a major blue green algae problem in that plant only 55 gallon. Once I return from a few trips planned in the next month I should be able to set up the others and finally start a mixed reef. This will give me a chance to place the loaches back into rotation (of course not in the reef). For a long time I thought it only the Otos keeping the plants really clean, but in fact the snails done a big part of it. Besides that, they are interesting additions if they are not infesting. Another good snail is the Malaysian Trumpet, this is a must for a sand substrate planted. They bury themselves during the day when the lights are on and when they multiply enough you can see the sand "moving". This is good because it keeps the sand from compacting toxic gases. I have never set up a tank this way, but I was inspired by seeing one in a customers house. This will be an addition I look forward to trying.

Here is a link that might be useful: Snails

I think snails are like Topsy...they just growed. I took down a 29 gal tank that was rotten with snails, scrubbed the tank with lots of salt, soaked the filter and heater in bleach water, boiled the gravel and rocks, and put in plastic plants which I really don't care for, and guess what?! In about 2 months I had snails. So where did they come from? I have no idea.

You obviously missed something or added something that had tiny eggs left untouched. Do what I did, bleach the entire tank, filter attached. (remove the fish of course)and rinse out several times over several days to completely remove traces of the bleach. That completely removed the problem and god forbid I will not have a recurrence.

Ianna