Yeah, Devs, I know you're answering another question of mine in another thread, so I thought I should start another....

What the heck do I do about baby snails and vacuming my tank?

That's the hard part about raising babies. I hatched all my snails in a 5 gallon tank and changed the water without gravel vacs. When they got bigger, I moved them to a larger tank(s) with crushed coral as a substrate, which is white, a good contrast to the snails. One thing you can do to gather all the babies up is clip some cooked veggies in one corner of the tank. All the snails will go in that direction and you can gravel vac the rest of the tank. Another thing I would do is put a collander over the sink drain in case I did suck any up through the python. That would catch them before they went down the drain. That won't work with hatchlings though, they're small enough to fit through the slots on a collander. You can see the snails in the sucker part of the python and at least with my low water pressure, they don't get sucked up real fast. So even when I do get a snail in there, I have a few seconds before they'll get sucked up to turn the emergency knob to stop the suction. Another thing you gotta worry about is your filter intake. That's where I found my first Chewy baby ever...inside my aquaclear!

I remember that!!!

Okay, I think I'm going to put some kind of screening material inside a colander since I am going to be using the python to EMPTY the tank. I don't use the faucet connected to the Python to empty though, so yeah, like you said, I'll be able to see if I sucked one up into the tube. I don't have another tank for the babies, so hopfully it all works out.

Oh, and awesome tip about luring them to one spot with food!! That should work!! (If the Chewy babies don't gobble it all down before the brigs even get there!! )

I have a white 5 gal. bucket that I use to syphon out water into.Before I dump it,I take a look in,to see if I got any baby snails in it.They can be seen fairly easy climbing up the sides of the bucket. It's a real pain,but I do it,so I guess it is worth it all. I have allready used coffee filter's in a collander to "screen" for snails. I don't even drink coffee!!!

Erika-I think the best way to not crush the baby snails is to remove the
gravel, it will be alot easier to clean out, and just incase you vaccum
up any baby snails i would put a net at the end of the vac.Good luck ,

Alex

Removing the gravel????? Yikes is right!!! hahahaaaha BO do you have any idea just how tiny baby Brigs are,and how many hours & hours,that would take???? You actually have a better chance of crushing the snails by removing the gravel.

I think I'll just try the food lure and the colander, mixed with a tight weave net over the end of the python. Those combined should do the trick. (Hope) Thanks guys!

Good point. You many wanna take the Chewy babes out first!

I like the coffee filter idea!

coffee filters work good!

I did that once when i had baby rams....

Yeah, wait a second...... what about rubberbanding a coffee filter to the end of the hose? Since I'm not using the sink with the python, i'm just letting it drain down the basement floor drain, I could rubberband a filter to the end of it, and when I'm all done water changin, take the filter off to see if I got any babies!!!!!

Or am I slow and that's what you guys have been talking aobut?

lol...yes

Duh.........Huh?????? You can sit the coffee filter in the colander-you can rubberband it around a python,you can use it anyway you want. Maybe I'll use that for a Tip pf the month!