Snails - Tried Everything!

[Durbs]

My tank is (and always has been) inundated with little snails, happened after i bought a plant and didnt check it well enough. Theres hundreds of the little buggers and its getting worse, i've tried:

- squashing them with an algae magnet (theraputic but non effective )
- The lettuce leaf trap (for some reason only a few of them like lettuce, also tried carrot and cucumber)
- Got YoYo loaches, seen them eat a couple of snails but they make no dent in the population

Got no more space for further snail eating fish so the only way i can see now is to try the chemical route which is something i really didnt want to do.

I've been reading the posting about various chemicals and was wondering whether anyone can recommend any of the various products that they've had a positive experience with. Dont want anything thats got a remote chance of harming my fish, are different products geared towards different species? Ive got:

4 x neon tetra, 5 x XRay tetra, 1 x Panda Cory, 2 x Yoyo's. Are any of these likely to feel ill effects from these chemicals?

Thanks.

Durbs

 

[emma12321]

Hi,

Before you do anything drastic, starve the fish for a week and the loaches should eat them, i found thet my loaches are quite lazy at snail munching if there is fish food around. Fish can go without food for 2 weeks with with no problems so a week will be fine.

Remember that if you use chemicals to kill the snails, you will have a tank full of rotting snail bodies to deal with. Loaches are also sensitive to a lot of water treatments so i wouldn't want to risk it with them in the tank.

Emma

P.S my loach tank is now snail free but my 180 is having similar problems to you, i just pick them out at water changes and put them in for the loaches.

 

[Dubby]

The snail population grows because there is lots of waste food for them to feed on. So I would suggest you reduce the feeds.

 

[consp]

Try catching them just as your lights go on in the morning... The majority of them should be on the top. you can buy chemicals that kill crustaceans in your tank but I wouldn't use them unless it really was last resort.

Hopefully your loaches will ghet a bit hungry and realise that the snails are there to be eaten

 

[rdd1952]

I experienced a similar problem with trumpet snails. As everyone mentioned, overfeeding is the problem. I finally emptied the tank, cleaned it and completely changed the sand the sand. I still had a few that were left stuck to plants but it solved the problem.

Cutting back on feeding may work but it will take a LONG time. Before I changed the sand, I cut back to 2 small feedings a week for a month and I couldn't tell that it even made a dent in the population. It actually seemed to be getting worse.

 

[ramaseseniblikxviii]

i had a major snail outbreak in my tank(the little buggers came on a plant from lfs)until i gave a good home to 2 clown loach.
now i actually have a 2 gallon fish bowl so that i can breed snails,cause the loach cleared the lot of 'em.
when alls said and done ,keep in mind that a few snails are benificial to your tank but i know from experience too many are very unsightly

 

[Synirr]

I just cut the snail population in one of my 10 gallons back by about 90-95%, so maybe my method will work for you... note that all my snails were trumpets, though.

I cut the bottoms off small soda bottles to make tiny shallow plastic bowls, in which I placed one or two Hikari bottom-feeder wafers. These contain both fish and plant matter, and everything seems to love them, so I figured they'd do the trick. Indeed they did... every day I removed the containers filled with snails and put another wafer in for about 4 days in a row, it worked like a charm

The fish in that tank were too small to move the wafers out of the "bowls", but for my tank with some larger fish I'm planning to put wafers inside a whole plastic bottle and see how that goes. In theory, the snails will crawl in through the neck of the bottle and the fish can't get to the wafer bait.

 

[Durbs]

Hi,

Before you do anything drastic, starve the fish for a week and the loaches should eat them, i found thet my loaches are quite lazy at snail munching if there is fish food around. Fish can go without food for 2 weeks with with no problems so a week will be fine.

Cheers folks, several good ideas there. Think i'm going to try the starving technique first as that seems the easiest way to go (seems a pretty obvious solution but i hadnt thought of that one at all!)

Half tempted to stick the fish in a bucket for a while though and completely clean and boil the tank and restock with new (critter free) plants as i've been wanting to change my gravel to a nicer looking sand base for a while now.

Hmmmm, decisions.