Okay, here's the thing...about three weeks ago, I bought two blue platys and put them in the QT. Last week, I moved them to the main tank. The tank at the lfs they were in was FULL of baby snails. I thought nothing of it. This Wednesday morning, guess what I found in my trop tank? Baby snails! How could that be? I did not transfer any water from the lfs; I always dip the fish out carefully with a net. Same goes for when they went from QT to the main tank. I don't understand- could the fish have carried them? The only way I spotted them was one was on the front glass. Upon closer examination, I counted at least 8-10 more on the gravel and driftwood. The biggest is no more than 1/8 of an inch. The smallest is size of a pinhead. BUt, the shells are nothing like the others I have seem posted here. They look longer, spiral.

Can anyone offer any ideas as to how I acquired these? And possibly, what type are they? I plan on doing my weekly gravel vac & water change tomorrow morning, so I'm afraid some will get sucked up.

Hi!
They sound like physids to me, which is a species of pest snails...they're a pain in the neck to get rid of because any two can breed and they lay eggs on EVERYTHING. I have never heard of them laying on fish, though I've had some lay on the shells of my larger snails; but I'd say it is possible the fish store person could have even scraped the wall with the net while getting your fish and thus acquired some eggs. The most common way for these guys to get in tanks is via live plants, but it's not unheard-of for them to get in without them. Even a piece of gravel from the LFS could have carried eggs or TINY babies (these guys start out about the size of a grain of sand). Hope this helps!

If you want to get rid of them, get a loach. I put a loach in my snail infested tank and the snails were gone pretty quick.

Thanks for the help, wyofish. I figured they might be a pest snail, and not anything that I might actually want in there. I'll probly suck up alot of them in the gravel vac today.

Erik, I had a clown loach in there until recently; he passed away. I doubt I will add another anytime soon. But thanks for the tip!

Here is a link to a pic...scroll down to the pic of the Malayan Livebearing snail. this is what mine look like!

http://naturalaquariums.com/inverts/snails.html