"Snail - In" Cycling!

A couple of the pond snails are now quite large, (bigger than a horned nerite)

That's interesting. Mine never get above 2/3 the size of my small nerites - though is your nerite new and young?

There are two similar species of pond snail (also called pest, trapdoor and tadpole snails). They are from the Physid family and the Limnaeid family, with Lymnaeids growing bigger than Physids. The way to tell the difference is by looking at the way the shell spirals. If you hold the snail with the point upwards and the shell opening downwards, Physids have the opening on the left (ie they are sinistral) while Limnaeids have the opening on the right (ie dextral)

My pond snails are all the smaller sinistral Physids.

Hello All,

Well, double zeroes for NH3/NO2 for the last two days now, so I am "snail - in" cycled. Tank is currently at 22deg C. (It's in a place in the kitchen where it gets some sunshine, and near to the cooker). The second generation of pond snails are now in abundance. I have not seen many baby MTS yet, so we await further progress - might have to do a night shift to check!  I do hope that the assassins are impressed with all this effort!

Thanks all for your help and advice,

                                                   Skittler

Good work.    I was inspired to put some MTS in halfway through the cycle of my volcano tank thanks to this.  They are still happily getting on with the algae cleaning.