I'm learning to live with pest snails... because you can never totally get rid of them...

[Magnum Man]

I've had one problem tank over the years, that has bladder snails, and I've tried everything to get rid of them... they must be native to my area, as I even got them in my outdoor tilapia raising tanks, and being food, almost nothing crossed with aquarium stuff for them to transfer from... now that I, and my tanks have matured in the hobby, I'm seeing much lower numbers in my aquariums... the point that snails really become pests, seems to come from many sources...

1st... water... if you have water in a container, you have a potential for snails to show up...

2nd... plants... if you have plants... even potted house plants, you can find snails

3rd... food... they would obviously have to compete against faster flying insects, but if you left even a pb&j sandwich out, it's going to attract snails...

so... back to my problem tank... it has water, and plants, but cutting back on feeding the fish to twice a week, has greatly reduced the number of snails... this is not an overnight fix, for every snail you can see in your tank, there are 20 you can't see ( so, your problem is actually much worse than you know ) but in 6 months of minimal feeding, twice a week, I have 1/4 to 1/3 of the snails I had previously...

in my Hillstream tank, I've never really had pest snails , it's highly stocked with biofilm eaters, so it's slim pickins for a snail... the tank went a couple years that way, then one day, "what the heck is that???" an adult bladder snail... no new plants, for it to import from... it must have gone "walk about" from a near by tank... in the last 6 months, I've seen 2 of them... both adults ( you know what that means ) but I've yet to see any eggs or babies... perhaps at least one of the biofilm eaters, will also eat snail eggs, or they just aren't trying to reproduce, as there is too much competition for food... I've even gotten to where I don't instantly get mad, when I see one... I suspect they will eventually move on, to another tank, with a better buffet selection...

they are mobile critters just trying to survive... I've never seen one crawling around in the house, but they just show up in my outside tanks, and I have evidence of them moving between tanks within my house...I'm having to learn to live with them, if I'm going to keep my tanks poison free...

 

[emeraldking]

I think that a lot of people have the same problem with pest snails. Eventhough, I always give new plants a salt bath and do rinse them well, it's not alway a 100% guaranteed that there are no snail eggs left that may cover your tank in no time. But the same goes for ramshorns. But pest snails are more of a burden in my opinion.

 

[gimme30]

I know you've seen my thread on this issue so I won't re hash that here but....
I am DOWN with the poisons! Bring 'em on and dump 'em in! Yeah baby! Let the snotbug killin' commence!

Brought to you by Snail Free in Denver. Living the dream!

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I only have snail issues in grow tanks and occasionally breeding tanks where there will often be fry. I have been able to get pest snail free tanks in two ways, The first is in tanks where I keep snail eating fish. This would be my clown loach tank and my tank with one of the smallest loaches, dwarf chains aka Ambastaia sidthimunki.

The clowns eat the bigger snails and by eliminating the adults they are eliminating the breeding, Ths sids being small can only eat the baby snails and this also works well as they never become adults which breed. Either way the result over time is no more snails.

The other way I get rid of pest snails is by having assassin snails aka Anentome helena. The problem, sort of, is thatthe assassins reproduce in tanks. However, they are a nicer looking snail and they are also in demand so one can sell them. Every month at my weekly fish club meeting I bring a couple of bags holding baker's dozen (13) snails that get sold. In January when my club holds its annual public auction I put a few bags of the assassins into that auction.



I do not suggest one get fish which eat snails unless you intend to keep that species for the longer term. I have kept both myu clowns and sids for about 2 decades now. I got these species before I realized how useful they are for ridding a tank of snails. Also, in thise tanks where I do get snail infestations because I feed really well, I harvest the snails weekly during normal maint. I then put these snails into the tanks where I have assassins. While I have no direct evidence that assassins might prey on fish eggs, wigglers of very small fry, I have chosen to stay safe in this respect and I do not put assassins in such tanks. I also do not put them into tanks with snail eating fish.

Finally, I have always had planted community tanks. Over the years as I set up new ones I was able to provide the needed plants from my existing planted tanks. I have bought almost no new plants in the last 15 years. There have been two exceptions. I have cone home from club meetings with a very large African Fern (Bolbitis heudelotii) and a huge Java fern (Microsorum pteropus) and most recently Frogbit (Limnobium laevigatum). None had snails or their eggs but with the frogbit came a very small amount of duck weed (Lemna minor). I have worked very hard to eliminate it. It is harder to get rid of than any pest snails I have encountered.

 

[Gertrudae]

Why do you call them pest snails?

I think they are very useful; they help keep the aquarium clean. They eat all the leftover food and dead plant parts, but never healthy ones.
In my opinion, you always have exactly the right number of snails to clean up. As you yourself have noticed, less food means fewer leftovers and fewer snails. In tanks where you have to feed a lot, e.g. breeding tanks, they are indispensable.
I have one or two tanks without snails; my A. thomasi like to eat them, and they are less stable than those with a normal snail population – bubble snails, rumshorn snails and trumpet snails.

 

[gimme30]

Why do you call them pest snails?

That's funny right there!

To be funny back....because unlike the Wolpertinger, they're just no good in soup!

 

[Gertrudae]

As a non-native speaker, perhaps I am missing something—what problems do these so called “pest snails” cause?

 

[MattW]

As a non-native speaker, perhaps I am missing something—what problems do these so called “pest snails” cause?

I think some people just don’t like them and want a fish/shrimp only tank. I know breeders don’t like them especially as they can prey on eggs. I keep snails for the reasons you listed above. I find them very useful and their empty shells make great decor in my tanks

 

[gimme30]

Just ribbing you a little bit @Gertrudae. Most people don't mind them and consider them useful for the reasons you mentioned.
They're pests to me because aside from eating eggs they're unsightly and clog up filters. I have fish and shrimp that perform the same functions far more efficiently and are much better looking to boot. Also they very much do eat live plants-I have proof in a anubias coin that is struggling because they eat the new growth. (I allow them to live in a nano tank I've set up while it matures) When I want to observe my fish I don't want to view them through a horde of snails on the front glass.

 

[Magnum Man]

they also add bio load to the tank, which can be quite significant, if you have 100's in a tank...

my outside tilapia tanks, used a pulsing gravity fed water filter, that used 5 gallon buckets as filter media containers, each had a square foot of 1 inch floss, as a prefilter... at their worst, I would be disposing of a 1/2 inch layer of live snails on 3 filters, once a week... if I were not catching them out, I would have been raising tanks of snails, rather than tanks of tilapia... since these fish were raised for food, they were fed 3 times a day, so there was a lot of waste... and controlling the snails was difficult... these in 250 gallon tanks, if they were pond raised there would have been 1000's of snails...

 

[Gertrudae]

a horde of snails on the front glass

You'r feeding too much ...

they also add bio load to the tank, which can be quite significant, if you have 100's in a tank

I think the biological load comes from too much food. And I would rather have this excess food eaten by a snail than left to rot in the soil. But a tank with tilapia as livestock is a different situation. You can't apply that to normal aquariums.

By the way, shrimp also eat fish eggs.

I like these little critters, and maybe that's why I don't like it when people call them pests.