Snail Infestation

[San O Fisher]

I have a snail infestation that is getting out of control. I am looking for any advice on how to rid the tank of the problem.

The tank has 3 pictus cats, 1 RTBS, 2 Clown Plecs, 2 BN Plecs, and some barbs.

My initial thought was to track down some dwarf puffer fish as they can just feed off the snails, but I was wondering if anyone had any non fish remedies. The infestation is getting pretty bad.

any help would be appreciated

 

[Fishy friend2]

try not feeding for 3-5 days, drop in a piece of lettuce every night, and take it out in the morning, pick up every snail out of your tank and squish them, squish any snails on the glass, and see how that goes

 

[LucyB]

I have never tried this, but I'm sure someone will reccomend it to you sooner or later! Put a piece of lettuce in before bed, leave it in overnight, and in the morning it should be covered in snails. Just take it out and chuck it.


EDIT!!! Just realised, fishyfriend beat me to it!!!

 

[soybean]

Assassin snails. They won't eradicate it overnight but are great for population control.

Reduce feeding to the tank drastically for about a week to prevent newly hatched snails from finding any food. The biggest cause of a snail population growing is excess food being available for them, from overfeeding fish.

Adding a piece of lettuce at night and weighing it down should attract quite a few, and you can just remove it with them attached in the morning. Try hiding it under a slightly propped up saucer to stop your fish getting to it too.

You can also remove them as you see them.

Don't use snail killer, the snails just die and rot in the tank, polluting it.

 

[Cazgar]

Assassins won't eat the small snails, & will take a long time to sort the problem.
Feed less & in the meantime try the lettuce trick others have suggested

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

Set yourself a daily routine of say ten minutes where you manually remove the pest snails, you could even combine this with leaving a lettuce leaf in the tank overnight. Eventually the infestation will be halted, I had my own snail crisis last summer in my 620T without resorting to buying snail eating snails or fish, it took about a fortnight..