Snail Problems

[noodles]

Hi,

AFter some advice, my tank has become infested with common pond snails and a few ramshorns. There are now millions of them. Seems i removed the sole culprit a little too late and now I can no longer keep track of them by removing them one by one! Seems they are also starting to out compete my fish for food sometimes with swarms of them sitting on any sinking food and algae wafers i put in.

I dont want to treat with chemicals ideally, as this usually causes more problems than good and I do also have some nice healthy shrimp that i dont want to die as they can be affected by treatments.

Any ideas of what to do?

My current ones are either a pygmy puffer (interested in your opinions on compatibility with the current occupants) or some snail eating loaches (trouble with this is i have a fair few bottom dwelling fish). My current set up is in my signature.

Appreciate your thoughts, its doing my head it and ruining my pleasant fish experiences!

cheers.

 

[penguin22]

As you have the shrimps I wouldnt use snail control,I have khulies so I cant either.Drop a little cucumber in and keep removing it with them on it.If there gets too many I squash them and my khulies and cory eat the remains(corys moved now).Ive heard this can pollute water but Ive never had problems. Hope this helps Im so happy there are none in my new tank they are a nightmare.

 

[ncjharris]

Chemicals for snails are bad in my experience. Have used them twice. Once was fine (or appeared to be). Second time sent the tank into a recycle and killed a lot of the fish and (I believe) contributed to the early death of some others. Then as soon as we added some new plants they were back!

The best thing we did was get some loaches (dojo), which cut back the numbers within days. They get a bit lax now (prob as they know they will get some wafers sooner or later) but there are still less now than before.

I am afraid they are a part of keeping fish, and esp. planted tanks!

 

[Underwurlde]

The is a safe way using a med called 'Flubenol 15' - a wormer for fish that also snuffs out all snails - takes about 3-4 weeks to do the course I recommend though. 'Flubenol 15' does not contain copper that is considered a poison and harmful to shrimp, is safe up to a dosage of 20x the recommended amount.

see my 2nd post here....
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=41473

Andy

PS, I am putting my money where my mouth is here, after trying everything else, I tried this stuff on my smallest tank that uses an internal filter (that got infested with pest snails btw) - it is planted, with fish and shrimp. Complete eradication of all snails after 3 weeks. Everything else, fine.

Andy