# I've had enough of snails.



## clep.berry (Mar 4, 2012)

Folks, my 15g planted has 1000s of snails - so I'm probably guilty of overfeeding - that's not the point here. I'm going to murder them because I've had enough.
Assassin snails are blacklisted here and my bloody loach doesn't have enough of an appetite (I've seen him eat exactly 1 snail anyhow).
It's possible - even probable that the snails are of a South African variety that are extremely resilient, and lettuce leaves and traps don't seem to work at keeping their numbers down. It's possible that they are livebearers although they look like rammshorn snails as I never see any eggs.
I've got a small 5g that I can house fish & mature filters in temporarily but I'd rather not tear everything down.

I also have access to another 15g tank and 3 filters capable of making a dent in ammonia spikes if necessary.

What's the easiest route - hopefully without rescaping?

cb


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## coralbandit (Jul 29, 2012)

Nobody likes using copper(will kill them all,and damage alot of other things).I had good success killing snails in one of my breeder tanks by using ONLY RO/DI water.Straight,nothing else.If your tank will allow pure water without adversely effecting other inhabitants,give it a two week try.I had snail shells laying around like(to quote another poster) cow skulls in the desert!Lack of hardness and minerals will wip them.


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## GreenyFunkyMonkey (Nov 27, 2012)

I have never effectively been able to get rid of snails. Mine came on some plants I bought from Petsmart even though they were supposed to be "snail-free." After trying just about everything I discovered shrimp work best. After a week or two they figure out that the snails are a source of food. Now I just see one or two snails at a time which is no biggy to me.

I hope this helps, and good luck!


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## bassslayer32 (Aug 30, 2012)

GreenyFunkyMonkey said:


> I have never effectively been able to get rid of snails. Mine came on some plants I bought from Petsmart even though they were supposed to be "snail-free." After trying just about everything I discovered shrimp work best. After a week or two they figure out that the snails are a source of food. Now I just see one or two snails at a time which is no biggy to me.
> 
> I hope this helps, and good luck!


What kind of shrimp do you have?


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

I need some of those shrimp. My yellow and cherries don't mess with mine.


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## tbub1221 (Nov 1, 2012)

2 weeks ago I noticed a ghost shrimp eating a itty bitty pest snale in my 30 gal .I have a tiger and a skunk loach also and although I do several times a week see pond/pest snail eggs at the water line most morngs I just pe em up when I can and my loach's and ghost/glass shrimp make fast work of them. Iv seen eggs for more than a month but ever only saw one snail , most likely petco plants .I guess though if it was me I'd firstly try a cucumber slice first put it in for a few hours then check it , it should get covered up fast even leave it wile ur out of the house then just scoop em up. If u can't get cucomber try zuchenee ud it wase and that didn't work I'd take and put the fish in the other 15 u can use or go spend 12$ and buy a plain glass 10 gal at a chain pet store pet smart and pet co sell plain no hood glass 10 gal for 12.99 then is bucket up atleast half your pree cycled water (this saves your tank time cycling and from killing fish with new tank syndrome then boil or scrub clean your sub start and ornaments. Remember to put your filter pad/media and the bio filter if u have one in a bowel of your pre cycled aquarium water to keep the culture strong or it will dry out and die , then your just cycling again completely. Clean it all up if u need safe ideas on ways to clean ask me . But that is a lot of work i know , so I'd do cucumber first maybe even a trap , get a 20 oz bottle cut off tip like a funnel and stick it back on backwards opening pointing inward wire it together with cucomber or something in it they get in easy but hard to get out. Also drop gravel in it to keep it down. But this trap can and will catch anything and everything in the tank that goes in so watch 4 little fish.


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## clep.berry (Mar 4, 2012)

So I made a small snail trap and used a lettuce leaf and a smal piece of sinking pellet...
Snails captured = 3.

Estimated snails vacuumed yesterday ~300 over 4 sessions removing 15% of water.
Snails vacuumed this morning ~30 - seems numbers are declining but the lettuce leaf was a waste of time.

I guess with so many snails, it's no wonder my loach is rarely seen eating them.

A quick scan of my tank 10 mins after shows about 3 snails visible.

cb


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## lonedove55 (Jan 25, 2012)

I know a lot of people do not like using chemicals in their tanks (I know I would rather not), but recently I had to treat a tank (26 gallon) for fungus (2 doses) and used Jungle Fungus Cure. It stated that it would harm invertebrates, so I moved my nerite snails to another tank. The fungus cure seemed to kill most if not all the pond snails in that tank (there were several in there), and it _*did not*_ destroy my biological filter nor harm my plants. It did turn the water sickly yellowish/green for a couple of days though.

I'm not sure if the Jungle Fungus Cure is available in your country, and if you can move your fish to another tank, this might be an option to rid your tank of your snail overpopulation. Just make sure to do several water changes afterwards and use carbon in your filter to remove the rest of the meds before returning the fish to that tank.


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## Mr_Pat (Apr 13, 2010)

our Apistos seem to love killing off the pond snails in our tank . in the pics you can see the mass of empty snail shells in the front of the tank.. though i believe the assassin snails are helping as well .. i see the appistos take out more snails then anything..










Apisto


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## Brian757 (Sep 24, 2012)

Get a turtle! Haha, mine devours them 2 minutes after I put the plant in. I usually get plants from my local pet store and they have them on there. My turtle spots them on the glass or on the wood, and then chomp!


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## Miss Vicky (Jul 6, 2012)

clep.berry said:


> So I made a small snail trap and used a lettuce leaf and a smal piece of sinking pellet...
> Snails captured = 3


What type of lettuce did you use? I have a Ramshorn infestation in a couple of my tanks and have been using the lettuce method to control them. The first time I tried it, I used iceberg lettuce and got maybe 3 or 4 snails. After that I switched to Romaine and I get tons of them with even a small piece.


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## tbub1221 (Nov 1, 2012)

I just have ordinary ghost / glass shrimp sold at most LDS aftet they get over an inch thel eat em up .. along with the tiger and skunk loach. But tiger loachs (with exception of horse face locals) have the longest skinniest mouths and can dig in to a small shell easier than a yoyo or skunk etc.. lice aquaria sells them cheap and ther beautiful and extreemely playfun and overly boisterous if I have a really pieceful slow community (angels Betts or guppts/platies ) he may stress them out. Problems with live aquaria is shipping is minimum 35$ us for overnight FedEx and they have a minimum order amount of 30 so for just 1 or 2 fish there not the best but they are a good company I think personally.


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## clep.berry (Mar 4, 2012)

I used iceberg I'm afraid - but also tried cucumber and a pleco tablet to no avail.
Sucked up about 50 snails today so I reckon I've got 90% of them - have also stopped feeding for a few days to give myself a chance to hit them hard.
cb


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## Dave Waits (Oct 12, 2012)

And all this is why I don't do live plants. SNAILS!!!


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## James0816 (Jun 19, 2009)

My blue pearls do a pretty good job at keeping them in check.

Never dose with chems or copper.

The only safe 100% guaranteed removal is via manually. Yes, it is a bit of work and yes you will need to rescape. The good thing is that it's a small tank. I'm currently in the process of doing it myself. I have (4) tanks now that are completely free of duckweed and snails. More in progress. I'll be down to only one tank with snails and duckweed by the end of the year.

I can provide you the steps that I did if interested.


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## Naia (Jun 4, 2013)

I found that the tiger loaches were way too rambunctious for my other fish. My tank has Gourami, mollies, danio, guppies, bumble bee gobies and thousands upon thousands of snails. They're in the filters and throughout the gravel. Cleaning happens monthly and thoroughly but the gravel vacuum doesn't seem to pick them up much. I've just removed all my plants in hopes that the population will somewhat starve and dwindle. I'm not sure if it will work or what I should try next. I have been collecting then with a scoop and net when they climb on the walls but they seems to breed like wild fire and are smaller than I can see. Should I invest in some some ghost shrimp or apistos? How effective does everyone find them? Or should I even even go as far as quarantining my tank?


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## Raymond S. (Jan 11, 2013)

I had an overpopulation of snails and the shrimp(RCS) do eat a few pond snails but just a few. I bought one Kuhli Loach. Aqavisor states that they like 5 or more to
feel secure and that less will result in nervous fish. Likely true because I never saw my loach since I put him in the tank unless I get where I can see inside the filter.
That is where he stays during the day. The pond/ramshorn snails are fairly easy for snail predators to eat but the trumpet snails are much harder...smaller openings.
The loach only comes out at night, as I sometimes find reason to turn on the light later in the night and he is out them. So he seldom gets any of the flake food
which I feed my fish. It took three weeks for me to start noticing a difference in the population of the snails but now few last long in there. The loach is adult size
now also...not much longer but fat... twice the diameter he was when bought at least. And almost three years old, maybe closer to two years.
As long as this problem has existed, a couple more weeks to give that a chance won't really hurt...and no chems. I really think the key here is that I have only one.
His behavior is different than normal and so is his incentive to find food other than flake.


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