best way to - kindly- get rid of bladder snails

[finfayce]

the bladder snails are taking over! if i try scrap them off, they fall into the gravel. then it’s a real pain. don’t want to squish. any ideas?

 

[itiwhetu]

I make up a little cloth bundle of algae discs, put it in the tank in the evening and in the morning scoop them out with a net. I put them in the garden.

 

[Lynnzer]

I just bet your water authority loves you introducing these into the natural habitat.
Just kill the buggers. They'll take over the world soon if we let them get away with it.
Seriously, as if my suggestion to kill them isn't serious enough, they are air breathing hermaphrodites that multiply way out of control. An infestation of them creates massive amounts of waste, and of course kicks the hell out of water quality.
Unfortunatly there's no easy way to rid yourself of them in an established tank. There'll always be an egg or an individual snail you miss that'll take over the world in a couple of months.
Now, try this.
Do as suggested to trap as many as you can and kill them on a daily basis, get a few Assassin snails and maybe a puffer or pea puffer or two just to keep until there are no more snails. Oh, don't add assassins though if you get puffers. You could also try fish from these shown here, including goldfish.
I tried Yoyo loaches but didn't get much success with them.
My pea puffers started eating the tails of the fish once they depleted the snail population so I took those back to the LFS.

 

[Naughts]

Make sure you are not over-feeding as this can cause a snail population explosion.
If you find snail eggs (jelly deposits on leaves), remove them from the tank.
Pest snails survive without filtration or heat. You could have a bowl of water indoors, or a tub of water in the garden, to put the snails in.

A lot of people don't remove snails. A population explosion shows that you need to rectify over-feeding or not doing enough maintenance. A well balanced tank will only have a few pest snails, although the exception is Malasian Trumpet Snails.
Snails do not add to the bioload as they only feed on what is already in the system (dead plant matter, excess food). By the snails digesting it, the waste is broken down quicker and is more easily processed by the filter bacteria. MTS burrow in the substrate which is thought to help prevent anaerobic gas pockets.

Don't buy fish to 'solve' a problem. They have their own needs that may be incompatible with the set-up or other fish, which will cause other problems. Only get a fish if you really want it for it's own merits and can provide it a comfortable home.

 

[finfayce]

I make up a little cloth bundle of algae discs, put it in the tank in the evening and in the morning scoop them out with a net. I put them in the garden.
View attachment 159222

thanks. i did move a lot to the guppy 20 gallon tank that is a lot of work and i would like to down size. i do over feed i guess. i stopped “saving” newly hatched guppies. i could put some in my native north american fish- they eat them. anyone want guppies. ughh

 

[finfayce]

thanks. i did move a lot to the guppy 20 gallon tank that is a lot of work and i would like to down size. i do over feed i guess. i stopped “saving” newly hatched guppies. i could put some in my native north american fish- they eat them. anyone want guppies. ughh

okay. i might squish bladder snails in my amano shrimp tank. tried a new brand of shrimp food- Fluval shrimp granules. they are bigger. my shrimp aren’t eating, but guess who is eating. the Snails. ughh.
going back to Hikari shrimp food. and i may start squishing snails. but my amanos are too precious.

 

[Lynnzer]

Way too many people seem to think that bladder snails are a result of overfeeing, which is at best, only partially true.
Sure, if you give them loads to eat then they will certainly take advantage of that, however I still have them in a tank that's been empty of fish for months, just waiting for a brood of fry to become large enough to put in it.
The tank was emptied and cleaned then new substrate was added and some plants, which is where I assume the snail eggs were attached to.
THEY ARE EVERYWHERE.......
They haven't been fed but still they seem to multiply. Who ever heard of a snail starving to death anyway?

 

[itiwhetu]

There are dozens of things lurking in our tanks waiting for the right conditions for them to reproduce.

 

[finfayce]

Way too many people seem to think that bladder snails are a result of overfeeing, which is at best, only partially true.
Sure, if you give them loads to eat then they will certainly take advantage of that, however I still have them in a tank that's been empty of fish for months, just waiting for a brood of fry to become large enough to put in it.
The tank was emptied and cleaned then new substrate was added and some plants, which is where I assume the snail eggs were attached to.
THEY ARE EVERYWHERE.......
They haven't been fed but still they seem to multiply. Who ever heard of a snail starving to death anyway?

 

[finfayce]

wow! it sounds like the story for a monster scary movie- “ The day the Snails came- and Didn’t leave!”

 

[finfayce]

i was shocked to find a patch of snail eggs the size of a small dinner plate in my guppy aquarium!
do you think goldfish eat bladder snails? i transfer some snails to the goldfish tank- but it looks like the number in there goes down.
hmmm

 

[itiwhetu]

Goldfish will eat snail eggs, we used to put a goldfish in some of our hire tanks to keep the snail population down.

 

[Lynnzer]

Goldfish do supposedly eat snail eggs but if they don't see them then the nuclear bomb is about to explode

 

[GaryE]

"get rid of" and "kindly" don't go together well. Murder is the only way, unfortunately. I don't suggest buying fish to eliminate them as that is stress for some poor fish, since you then have to get rid of it. And they always miss one.

Catch and crush (outside the tank), give them to a puffer keeper, feed them to a turtle (my approach) - there is no kind, smooth way to eliminate these pests.

 

[Lynnzer]

I go into the tank room early each morning. The blackout curtains are closed and there's no light on. I turn one of the blue lights on above the tank and hey...... A whole army.
Not many of them are getting bigger than a grain of rice and many are perhaps only a day old and hardly old enough to have a shell.
I killed/squashed at least 30 on the front glass this morning and as many as I could reach on the glass sides. Then I switch the lights off and go in again about an hour later and kill a few more that have appeared. it's an ongoing problem and I DON'T OVERFEED THE FISH.
Cockroaches of the fishtank. Gahhhhh