Dealing With Snails

[dredgy]

Hi. I've been on holidays and it seems while I was gone a fair few snails have grown in my tank.
 
My options to get rid of them appear to be clown loaches (expensive and not part of my stocking plan, so I'd rather leave as last resort) or lettuce. Now I put lettuce throughout the tank and placed a couple of snails on the lettuce to get a taste for it, and then when I woke up the snails I had placed on the lettuce were gone, and every other snail was still chilling on the ground/walls/plants.
 
Do I have to do something to the lettuce to trap them?

 

[techen]

I suggest putting it in and waiting a few hours, Not a entire day.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

the lettuce trap is usually done over night.  Put it in the tank just after lights out, and first thing in the morning, pull it out.  

 

[techen]

But he did that and it was gone, So there's most likely tons of them :B

 

[dredgy]

I think I worded that badly - the lettuce is not gone, just the snails I placed on the lettuce beforehand. My snails just don't seem to like lettuce, which isn't unique to my tank - my Kuhli's don't like peas and my bristlenose doesn't like algae.
 
There are snails everywhere around the tank.
 
So in short, I left the lettuce overnight and there were less snails on at 5AM then there were at 9PM.

 

[BLACK DDOG]

get some assassin snails, the best thing I have used.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

In that case, start pulling them out when you see them (and consider the assassins).  I had a bit of an outbreak when I first got live plants, and I used to siphon out as many as I saw when doing a water change.

 

[jocie1976]

I second the assassin snails. I put just a couple in four different tanks that had a major pest snail outbreak and it didn't take the assassins very long to decimate the population. No snail problem here now! And once the snails are gone, the assassins will be happy to eat any detritus or algae they can find. They haven't touched my plants at all. I think they are great additions to any tank with a snail problem!

 

[dredgy]

Unfortunately can't have assasin snails in Australia. So my alternatives are clown loaches if the lettuce trap doesn't work tonight,and I don't really want them. Or I'll just siphon them out.

 

[CezzaXV]

My advice would be to just squish them whenever you see them. Your fish will thank you for the tasty treat! Eventually their numbers will dwindle.

There's nothing wrong with snails in a tank, they don't cause any harm and some people will actually argue that they're beneficial. It's just that many of us find them unsightly.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

What really finished my snail problem was to get a young BN.  He out competed the snails for the algae growth in the tank.  Then snail population just disappeared after that.  (I think he might have also been eating the snail eggs, or even the baby snails himself.  No proof of that, but the dropoff was so drastic, I could have sworn he was enjoying French cuisine with his 'salad'.)

 

[Shelster]

Depending on tank inhabitants what about Pakistani/Yoyo loach?

 

[Shelster]

Have just seen a video on YouTube whe you use a 750ml water bottle or 500ml whatever the drinks sizes are, pierce a hole in the cap (pest snail size hole) cut the bottle in half then add lettuce and fit the cut off top half into the bottom half so it creates a trap with lettuce in - hope that makes sense??

 

[dredgy]

Just bought a couple of Pakistani loaches (wanted more but none available) - one is in his infancy, the other is quite large. Both get along exceptionally well with the Kuhlis and the big one spends his time trying to fit into places far too small for him. The little on is buzzing around in the plants with the striped Kuhlis. Hopefully they'll take care of the snails and their eggs.

 

[Shelster]

They are entertaining to watch, I have a 13 year old Pakistani loach in my tank