Snail infestation!

[AbbyLou94]

I have a tank with endlers and cherry shrimp, all was fine until I bought a new plant and it must have come with a free hitchhiking snail.

I know snails can be beneficial in tanks so I let it stay not realising they don't need another male/female to breed so I woke up to a load of baby snails. I got rid of the adult immediately and did a deep clean including the gravel but I still spend at least 20 mins every day picking out the babies, I've counted 32 so far but every morning there seems to be more turning up!

I am worried they will overtake the tank and ruin the eco balance, I have looked online and have just put a well-washed lettuce leaf in the tank which I will leave overnight which will apparently attract them. I have also seen some chemicals that kill the snails but will this harm the fish/shrimp/plants? Any other ideas of how I can get rid of them?

TIA

 

[PlasticGalaxy]

What kind of snails?
And yes, I'm pretty sure the snail killers will also harm or kill shrimp. This is why there's sites dedicated to selling plants that haven't had snail killers used on them.

 

[TheTenthDoctor]

Here is what I did. 1. pick out snails every day, vacuum them up, pick them out, anything. 2. control the food supply. Make sure you are not feeding your fish too much. The snails will only breed if there is a large enough food source to support all of them. If you monitor the food they will stop breeding. Anyhow this is what worked for me

 

[Slaphppy7]

Assassin snails, they too will breed, but not nearly as much as pest snails.

 

[ArmchairAquariest]

I would go with assassin snails and wait. Both the regular snails and the assassin snails will continue to breed but over time both of their numbers should become much lower then where you are now. Also assassin snails look interesting and pretty (IMHO).

The only other option with your shrimp in there, is their are some specialized snail leeches. These will eat snails, breed like crazy, and then eventually all starve to death after all the snails are consumed. This is gross (IMHO) and will require eyes on water parameters and water changes to deal with the effects of snail and leech corpses stacking up, but it is your only possible hope to zero snails in your tank given the shrimp and such in there if that is what you are looking for.

Again, personally I would just go with the assassin snails and accept the eventual "manageable" much smaller snail population. Its actually good to have a few little snails around, they reprocess shrimp poop helping it to break down even further and aid a little bit with some cleanup here and there. There wouldn't be so many in your tank from the given infestation if they weren't finding some things to clean. So it is a sign that there is cleaning "work" for them to do in there for you.

 

[AbbyLou94]

Thanks for all the advice, I’m not sure the breed of snail but I’ve attached the best picture I got of the first snail. I will feed less and hopefully the breeding slows down, will assassin snails potentially harm the shrimp?

 

[Slaphppy7]

Bladder snail....assassin snails won't harm live shrimp, but they WILL scavenge any dead ones.

 

[Sgooosh]

Thanks for all the advice, I’m not sure the breed of snail but I’ve attached the best picture I got of the first snail. I will feed less and hopefully the breeding slows down, will assassin snails potentially harm the shrimp?

View attachment 134968

bladder snail. harmless tank cleaner guys

 

[ArmchairAquariest]

Assassin snails are considered shrimp safe. If you really dig people very occasionally have a video of a starving assassin snail attacking a geriatric or sick shrimp. So it does happen, but it is rare enough that no one I know of has ever had trouble having both shrimp and assassin snail populations in the same tank, including small tanks. Only starving assassin snails will try to go after shrimp, and only sickly or otherwise weak shrimp can be felled by assassin snails (they are still snails after all, they are incredibly slow relative to shrimp.)

 

[Byron]

You do not want assassin snails. Adding larger snails is not going to help, only make it worse. Plus, they are illegal in some places (no idea about UK/EU) because they get into the local ecosystem and can wipe out the native species.

I am worried they will overtake the tank and ruin the eco balance,

This is not likely. These small snails (pond, bladder, etc) are eating the organics that are already in the system, re-processing them, not adding to them, and breaking them down faster for the bacteria to deal with, or to provide plant nutrients. The numbers there are shows just how much organics are in the tank. They are indeed beneficial. I appreciate some aquarists do not like them, but they are doing a job you can't manage as well otherwise. Feed your fish less perhaps (many really do "overfeed" fish without realizing it) and keep in mind the snails can only live if they get food (organics like fish excrement, any dead material, excess fish foods) and they will not reproduce beyond that point as they will starve.