Little Tiny Snails

[alysonpeaches]

I keep finding little tiny round snails, silver colour, they are about 3 or 4 mm in diameter. I suspect they came with some of the plants. Shall I get rid of them before they grow into big snails? How do I do this? Just pick them out? If I squish them will the fish eat them?

 

[Mr Bliss]

I keep finding little tiny round snails, silver colour, they are about 3 or 4 mm in diameter. I suspect they came with some of the plants. Shall I get rid of them before they grow into big snails? How do I do this? Just pick them out? If I squish them will the fish eat them?

If you don't personally hate snails, I'd say just let them be. They'll do their part in keeping the tank clean, and are fun to watch in my opinion. Chances are they won't hurt your plants either; at any rate they'll hurt them a lot less than their reputation would suggest.

Plus snails can be useful indicators of the tank's condition. If you have a sudden population boom, you know you're probably overfeeding (or failed to remove a dead fish). And if all your snails head for the surface and climb out of the tank, you'll know there's something wrong with the water.

 

[Corleone]

Put some cucumber or lettuce in and you can lift them out in the morning. Generally, most of the common snails you get aren't going to be a danger to plants or fish.

http/www.fishforums.net/content/Inverteb.../Snail-species/

Try to get an idea what snail it is. Most likely it'll be ramshorn or pond snails of some sort. Pond/tadpole snails can breed very fast, and IME were fairly hard to keep under control, but didn't do damage except to unhealthy or dying plants, in which case they're not really doing harm as the plant will be releasing ammonia anyway.

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with Corleone, plus, notice that there's a mcduff thread, same topic, down a ways.

 

[alysonpeaches]

Agree with Corleone, plus, notice that there's a mcduff thread, same topic, down a ways.

I think Im overfeeding. I didnt feed anything on Sunday and there are less snails now. So I will be doing this once a week plus reducing my daily "pinch". I was putting extra in because I had fry and wanted them to have something left after the others had gobbled everything.

 

[DaveW860]

Snails are also good feeders for some of your fish. However if you wish to get rid of your snails (there kinda cool) you can get Snail control in america its a chemical you can drop in and it takes care of them before they turn into hundreds.

 

[Corleone]

Avoid using chemicals if you still have a lot of snails - use natural methods (snail eating fish like loaches or baiting - you can make a trap with a small jar, so that snails that leave the bait will still be on the jar, and you might catch more of them) and get them to the point that you don't notice them, then you can wipe them out chemically to be sure, though at that point, keeping their numbers low should be easier than getting them low.

Rather than reducing feeding (though that's not usually a bad idea), increase your gravel vacs - that was the biggest thing to eventually get my snails all under control.

 

[lana]

i had a couple to i pulled them out of the tank once i seen them and added lettuce to get the resy i had 4 in total, i personally think the ugly on side of tank