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Hodge-podge gone/Pond snail questions



Hi, All!

I got a number of people asking about my plants... Thanks for all of your 
kind offers - they've found homes, already. Y'all are great!

I have a concern about the pond snails that I now have in some of my tanks. 
I've noticed that there are holes in a considerable number of the leaves on 
my plants and I don't recall this happening before the introduction of the 
pond snails. I also have red ramshorn snails and Malaysian trumpet snails, 
neither of which have ever harmed anything and have been wonderful at 
cleaning up decaying vegetation.

On some of my golden lloydiella (L. nummularia 'aurea'), I not only have 
holes, but there are numerous "thinning specks" on the older leaves - sort 
of tiny, transparent spots that appear to start towards the outer tips. It 
almost looks as though something very tiny was scraping at the leaves and 
sucked the chlorophyll right out of these teeny spots. Some of this 
"speckling" starts as high up as the second leaf-pair from the top.

I have a strong hunch that there's a nutrient deficiency, here, but I don't 
like the idea of my snails doing clean-up prematurely. I'm starting to 
think that the actual holes that I see started off as a "thinning speck" 
and the snail managed to break through. It's improbable that the red cherry 
shrimp would be the culprits - I don't think they're strong enough to cause 
this sort of damage. But they do "graze" on whatever they're finding on 
this plant. Should I do what I can to get rid of the pond snails, or would 
I be punishing the wrong guys by doing this?

Thanks for any advice.

-Naomi