New Way Of Stopping Snails... Maybe?

[ryguy]

well i had tiger barbs and ghave them away to a friend. once gone snails started to appear, but when i added them again they began to decrease till i could see them no more. do you think they take care of pest snails? anyone else have this expierence?

 

[Revision17]

I've seen tiger barbs be a aggressive and pick at large apple snails (one lost an eye to the tiger barbs). They're also aggressive towards anything which moves and is significantly smaller than them.

To me, it doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility that they'd eat snails they could fit in their mouths, particularly larger tiger barbs.

I'd still put my money on any kind of loach over tiger barbs though for pure snail control. If more people confirm this, then we might have a Tiger Barb : Snails :: Livebearers : Algae relationship (as in they take random nips, but won't want to eat those foods exclusively)

 

[sarah86]

my snails seemed to dissapear when my blue rams went into the tank, we just found loads of empty shells, the tank was over run with them before

 

[kamber]

Zebra loaches (Botia Striata) do a sterling job with snails! They are not aggressive and they grow to max 10cm. Typcial size is 7-8cm when grown.