Chemical Snail Treatments

[mandi]

I was looking at chemicals that supposedly kill snails.

For instance, this one says "1 drop treats 1 gallon. Treat for two days. Repeat treatment in two weeks to eliminate newly hatched snails."

But how long will this linger in the water or on the plants? The reason I'm wondering is, every time I buy live plants, no matter how much I rinse them, I seem to manage to get pest snails in my tank. Now that I'm doing a nice new planted tank, I want to avoid getting pest snails in it. So I was thinking maybe I could soak the plants in a water/snail-killer stuff solution before adding them to the tank?

My only reservation is: (1) I'm hesitant to add any funky chemicals like that to the tank, and (2) I may sometime down the road want to add an apple snail to the tank, and I don't want lingering effects of this junk to harm it.

What do you all think?

 

[catfishfan]

chemicals that kill snails usually have high amounts of copper in them, which is a no no for plants. If you want to go the no chemical route, try a dwarf puffer. They are very very small and do a very good job at keeping snail outbreaks at a minimum.

Also the copper will linger because it meshes with water extremely well.The only way to get rid of it is by water changes

 

[kenneth_kpe]

i think what you are asking is killing of the snails clinging on to the plants before introducing them to your aquarium.. personally i have not tried it yet so lets wait for somebody to tell us what to do i want to do that too

 

[Paradise_Gourami]

i too have had a bad snail outbreak before and an extremly efective way of removing them is to go loaches(clowns are really good) which make a snack of those little invaders, and it surprisingly took a very short time for 2 loaches to eat all the snails in a 29 gal tank