Found A Snail In My Fish Tank

[platy83]

Hi
When I woke up this morning I found a little snail attached to the glass in my fish tank. How did this happen?? Is there anything I should know about snails? I am really new at this.....thanks!

 

[DarkEntity]

Probably came in on a plant. If you dont want it just squash it on the glass, your fish will do the rest.

 

[iroc]

get it out NOWWWWWWWWW i had one sanil come on a plant and within 2 months I had hundreads of them. Only now that I put a clown loach in there are they gone. BEWARE of the snails

 

[platy83]

get it out NOWWWWWWWWW i had one sanil come on a plant and within 2 months I had hundreads of them. Only now that I put a clown loach in there are they gone. BEWARE of the snails

oh oh youre scaring me!! so they really play no useful purpose?? how do they reproduce so fast??

 

[Teelie]

Don't worry. Depending on the species, it could be more beneficial than harmful though if you don't want any snails at all, remove it while you've got the chance in case it is a pest species.

 

[Neal]

Post a picture, and we'll indentify it for you to say if it's harmful or useful. All it can do is reproduce lots and eat plants, they can't kill your fish or anything.

 

[liz2]

I cant get rid of my snails...had them in my really big tropical had a disaster and lost all my old big fish apart from a catfish thing. He got moved to a different tank, different gravel...no snails...all of a sudden they returned the only thing in the tank from the old one was a large rock..they must have been on there. I just cant get rid of them, use treatment and then you have to fish them out but you cant get rid of every one.

ps and my GALS are getting bigger!

 

[vancouver]

Most snails will eat leftover food and algae..

Some will take a liking to live plants and eat those..

Is it a small reddish colored snail?

or more of a long cone shell shaped snail?

 

[tattae]

Beware of the long cone shape snails! They reproduce extremely fast and almost impossible to get rid of them. Last year I found a couple crawling in my tank and thought "oh so cute" so I left them there. The next thing I know, they were hundreds of them on the substrate and a whole lot more under it. At feeding times, the substrate were literally moving. It was creepy. I put dwarf puffers in there to eat them, but they couldn't do the job. The shells were too hard for them. I even try putting huge puffers in there but no help there either. So ... I ended up emptying the whole tank, changed the substrate, and scrubbed every inch of the bogged wood to get rid of their eggs.

But, if it's the little round one. You can put a dwarf puffer in there and he will enjoy munching on them. You'll have to remove the puffer once he finished with the snails though, or he would start munching on something else!

HTH