Best Snail Eaters?

[valeofglam]

I bought some plants that came with added features in the name of snails.

They seem to have multiplied and now it's baby snails everywhere! Picking them out as I see them doesn't help as its a losing battle!

I have Malaysian trumpet snails that I introduced and happy with as they keep themselves to themselves and don't multiply !

I thought about getting assassin snails but they'll wipe the whole lot out.

Will Kuhli loach eat snails? I read conflicting reports! I see clown loaches will but they grow huge, too huge for my tank! Another idea is getting a dwarf chain loach but I don't know how community they are and if they get on with plecos?

 

[Shelster]

Pakistani loach/ Yoyo loach ( same thing)

 

[coolie]

Kuhlis don't eat snails. My Black Mollies used to eat snails, but I had to crush them with the algae magnet againstthe edge of the tank when they were nearby. They would find them irresistable if you do that. This isn't for everyone's cup of tea, killing them like that.

 

[zoopkamol]

i wouldnt get loaches just to eat snails.... most snails multipyl because there is too much overfeeding in tank.
stop overfeeding if you are and should help with snail problem.
 
my 5 clowns clear any snails i get from new plants introduced to tank.
i actually breed snails in seperate aquarium just to feed my clowns

 

[valeofglam]

Cheers, I was reading up on Pakistani loaches and all was going good until I got to the part where it said they eat shrimp also! That rules this one out!

 

[DerpPH]

You can try assassins as you said earlier. They do the job well

 

[Noahsfish]

If you're trying to get rid of snails easiest way (like already said) is to avoid overfeeding, and removing them by hand is also A LOT faster then waiting for your fish to eat them.  If you don't have the heart to just throw them in the bin then you can get a small container, fill it with tank water and transfer all the snails you see into there.  I do this, and there's basically no maintenance I have to do, plus it's a neat desktop item.  Oh yeah, and throwing in some java moss wouldn't hurt either.

 

[David J]

I had the same problem with live plants introducing pest snails. They quickly got out of control so I had to change things. I cut my feeding down and added 3 assassin snails. The assassins certainly started eating pest snails but they didn't even make a dent at first. It got to the point that at any one time, at a glance, I could count about 40 pest snails. I estimate apt here was probably between 50-100 in the tank. I started manually removing any I could see once a day. This really made a difference. Now, my assassins have bred and I have at least 8 now and I don't need to do anything with the pest snails. I still remove one or 2 now any then if they're on the glass but there are hardly any in there now.

In summary, reduce feeding, add assassins and remove as many pests as you can. Oh, and I believe your MTS will breed like rabbits so keep an eye on them.

David