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Solution for getting rid of freshwater limpets - Acroloxus Lacustris

frothhelmet

frothhelmet

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Joined
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USA / London
I had a tank with freshwater limpets - Acroloxus Lacustris and they were obscuring the glass on my 37 gallon tank and didn't 'naturally go away' with time - had them for 2 years! Really bothered me in fact. No one seemed to know how to get rid of them, but I recently added a juvenile angelfish because my friend had one extra, and guess what! It's eating them like popcorn, hunting them constantly. The 37 gallon looks completely clear of them after I was away for 4 days, and the angel is going to town now on a population in my 20 gal. Finally a solution besides stripping down your tanks.

'Angel'fish is right! - Hallelujah!
 
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frothhelmet said:
I had a tank with freshwater limpets - Acroloxus Lacustris and they were obscuring the glass on my 37 gallon tank and didn't 'naturally go away'. with time - had them for 2 years! Really bothered me in fact. No one seemed to know how to get rid of them, but I recently added a juvenile angelfish because my friend had one extra, and guess what! It's eating them like popcorn, hunting them constantly. The 37 gallon looks completely clear of them after I was away for 4 days, and the angel is going to town now on a population in my 20 gal. Finally a solution besides stripping down your tanks.

'Angel'fish is right! - Hallelujah!
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In over 40 years of fishkeeping I have never seen one of those Acroloxus Lacustris in any of my tanks. Any idea how they got into your tank?
Screenshot_20230926_102146_Chrome.jpg


I guess I've just been lucky.
 
Hi all,
REDSTEVEO said:
In over 40 years of fishkeeping I have never seen one of those Acroloxus Lacustris in any of my tanks. Any idea how they got into your tank?
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I think mine came with <"some moss that I collected">, either from the River Avon in Chippenham or the <"Bosherston Lily ponds">.
frothhelmet said:
and didn't 'naturally go away'. with time - had them for 2 years!
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I actually like them, and have had exactly the opposite problem, they seem to <"boom and bust"> and I'm not sure I have any left now.

cheers Darrel
 
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REDSTEVEO said:
In over 40 years of fishkeeping I have never seen one of those Acroloxus Lacustris in any of my tanks. Any idea how they got into your tank?
Click to expand...

I had one that made it into my tank for less than a minute. It was hanging on the plant that was put into the amano shrimp package. I emptied the contents of the bag into a bucket a drip acclimatise. Somehow when I netted the amanos, it made it into the tank as I saw it on the glass. Picked it up and chucked it out immediately. Hopefully it was the only one but I haven’t come across any others in the past 7 days.
 
Yeah well, there was a time I liked them too. But then they blanketed my front glass and didn't go away. Any case, they compete with my Theodoxus Fluviatilis snails - so glad for them to be gone. They came into my tank on some Elodia Densa from a long-time LFS I put into another tank, and when I transferred some snails, they appeared. Any case, you can see lots of threads on the net with people like me trying to get rid of them, but zero solutions. At least there is one now. FYI, my angel is about 2 inches snout to end of tail.
 
Isnt it strange how we want to get rid of things in our aquariums. Life that are beneficial to the system.
 
Had them in nearly all of my tanks. Didn’t really bother me. But then the population never reached the size that’d cause a nuisance. Same with ostracods and the like, I just view them as free fish food and added interest. But pest snails, I try to eradicate with extreme prejudice. On that note I think a proprietary molluscicide should do the trick if you really want rid of FW limpets.
 
Tim Harrison said:
On that note I think a proprietary molluscicide should do the trick if you really want rid of FW limpets.
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The problem is I have other snails I want to keep in the tank (which the limpets compete against), and generally these formulations contain copper which will also kill shrimp and embed itself in your silicone preventing keeping any invertebrates in that tank in the future.
 
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