Snail Infestation!

[Dr1_veR]

Hi all i have a small 20L tank with 4 Harlequin Rasboras and 3 Zebra snails.
when i bought a plant i had a visitoer egg in it as a ramshorn snail. Now its spored and i have loads of the little buggers.
any ideas on how to get rid of all these snails that dosent involve a very long stakeout with a net lol

- Graham

 

[kiriyama]

A piece of lettuce in a small bottle, or weigh it down with a stone/ornament, put it in the tank at lights out and remove them in the morning, they are usually the result of overfeeding, very guilty of that one myself, I could sell you a couple of assassin sanils very cheap but I don't know 100% if you zebra snail would be safe, hope this helps

 

[waterdrop]

Agree, lettuce is usually the veggie to try first (then others could be tried) and the trick the snails try -if- they go for the veggie overnight is that they drop off when you lift the veggie and get quickly blown away by the current. So people use a teacup plate or small bottle as mentioned to try and catch them as they escape. Move the plate very slowly if you've got some. Most people also practice "catch and dispose" over time, either crushing the smaller ones as fish food or crush and toss to the yard to recycle the organic material. Don't put them in a household bin as the crawl out and get all over your house. WD

 

[Gilli]

I had the same problem. Best to do it without chemicals - just remove any eggs you see and pick out any snails you see and squish them and drop them into the tank. Its free fish food and the fish will fight over them. If you do this every day after a while you wont see any - I dont have a single snail now!

 

[the_lock_man]

I had the same problem. Best to do it without chemicals - just remove any eggs you see and pick out any snails you see and squish them and drop them into the tank. Its free fish food and the fish will fight over them. If you do this every day after a while you wont see any - I dont have a single snail now!

That depends on how big your infestation is! I tried that method, and they were just breeding faster than I could remove them (yes, I was overfeeding!). Assassin snails sorted the problem for me, and whilst I haven't experimented, I would have thought your zebra snails would be safe. I think that an Assassin would tackle a small Malaysian Trumpet Snail, but nothing bigger. I agree that chemicals aren't the ideal answer.