snails!

[Jibby]

hello everyone i like your forums very helpful :)
anyway heres the story i bought a plant for my tank and a snail hached out i guess thats where he came from anyway i kinda liked him so i let him be well long story short the plant is gone and now i have like 500 little snails in the tank i couldnt get rid of them the more i took out double that would come back

my tank is 10g consist of 3 fancy guppies and 1 small pleco

is their anything i can get to get rid of the snails? a fish or something. really i dont want to get to many more fish for the tank i like them to have room to move around. ive been saving up for a 55g and a stand :) but that will probably be 3-4 months ahead and i would like to get rid of some of these things :) thanks in advance :D

[TKOS]

Well loaches are great at eating snails, but the best ones get too big for a 10 gallon tank. If it was a definate thing taht you are moving to a bigger tank then I would say get a couple of yoyoloaches or three (they need groups). But in a 10 gallon for any length of time it probably wouldn't be a good idea.

A quick trick is to pu a lettuce leaf in the tank before bed. In the morning it should be covered in snails. Throw it away. Repeat. You won't get rid of all of the snails but this will eliminate a whole bunch at a time.

It sounds like there is too much food in the tank. Snails tend to explode in population when there is ample food. Try reducing the amount of food you give the fish, that should help control things as well.

[aquariumfishguy]

Also, there are products out there such as "had-a-snail" or "snail away" which kills off the snails and their babies. It's got rave reviews, and so has the lettus leaf method. It's really up to you. Keep in mind, I have been informed that certain meds to remove snails have been named Illegal in the UK and other places.

[fishdude]

mmmmm escargot :p

[aquariumfishguy]

:sick:

[snakeskinner]

not sure if I just don't know how to use the complicated lettuce or not but I can't seem to get it to work. I've had a bout with snails for about 4 or 5 months now. I was just dipping and trashing them as fast as I could and doing a fairly good job of it. I tried the lettuce by sinking a tuft of it and by floating some leaves and only get a couple snails every once in a while. I get the most snails on the tank sides, especially at the top, just below the tank edge. I can rake my fingers under the lip and knock them off and catch them with a net. When we did a 50% water change in my 55 gallon and discontinued feeding for 5 days trying to lower my nitrate spike, they seemed to drop way back but they're starting to come back now that we've continued feeding. I knocked back our feedings from 2 a day to once a day and occasionally skipping a day. we've also dropped back how much we're feeding. I have 4 large cories, 2 small cories and 4 small pleco's so I'd think there would be too much competition for the leftovers but the snails survive. I have not tried had-a-snail because we are planning to get some dwarf puffers in a 10g in the next few months so we'll have a purpose for the snails at that time. I was given an algae killer once before and told to remove all invertebrates and plants but it didn't affect the snails. had-a-snail is supposed to work but I've never tried. I'm still dipping and trashing. Kyle

[TKOS]

I woudl saty clear of any of those chemicals. Basically the theory there is that toxin in a low level will killthe nsails but not the fish. But over dosing could wipe out your fish as well. They contain copper salts generally and these have a tendancy to hang around in the tank. If you want things like crabs or snails or freshwater shrimp in the future the remaining copper could kill them off. Try reducing your feedings or increasing your cleaning with a gravel vacuum as a preventive measure.

[RENEGADE]

I have a snail tank (for my puffers) and I find that they like Zucchini better then lettuce

[dethjam316]

well...you could add 3 small skunk loaches, but you'd really be pushing the bioload for your tank. they have them at most petsmarts (never seem them at any of my lfssss) for like $1.50 and they stay smaller than yoyos. but, really, you'd be pushing it. your best bet is to just pick them out by hand whenever you see them and deal with it until you upgrade.

[MelJr]

I had lots of small snails in one aquarium and I added a large mystery snail. Now there is one mystery snail and a very small number of the small snails. The mystery snail ate most of the little snails. Don't know if the mystery snails eat their own kind but it sure ate whatever kind was in there.

[dethjam316]

i seriously doubt the mystery snail ate all of the other snails. i've never heard of such a thing. maybe it took away the other snails' food sources, or *maybe* it ate some of the eggs.....either way, i don't recommend this as a possible solution. it was probably a coincidence.

[MelJr]

The kind of snails I had were very small, even as adults they were smaller than BBs. They were ramshorn shaped. And I saw the mystery snail eat one of them.

[ElPasoSiren]

I also have apple snail (a.k.a. mystery snail)tank and i have never seen them eat another snail.
I have had that problem with those small snails you get from the plants you buy at the lfs. I got a piece of cucumber and put it in the tank over night and the next day it was covered with snails. So,just do that for a while and siphon the ones you can't get. As long as they don't have a source of food,they'll start dying off.If that doesn't work,then i would recommend you buy that product that aquariumfishguy mentioned.

Good Luck!:D

[Grassguy]

What worked for me? I started vfeeding my fish less, and I started crushing the snails I could reach against the glass every night. The guppies and cories love em. So I found a food source for my fish as well. I even see the guppies trying to get at the snails now, but they have a little trouble. not all the snails are gone, but we have put a big dent in their population.

[Jibby]

thanks for all the input :) i think ill try that lettuce thing i really dont want to use chemicals if i can keep from it personally i just dont like them i just wish my pleco would eat the snails up heh :D but it isnt a definate thing that ill be upgrading soon i have hard and i meen hard well water their supposed to bring out rural water out my way this year sometime and untill they do i cant upgrade im doing good with a 10g i can see me filling up 55 one gallon jugs at my uncles place lol but one can only dream i guess :)

[adblair]

I started crushing the snails I could reach against the glass every night.

:sad :sad :sad :sad :sad

[Grassguy]

Originally posted by adblair


:sad :sad :sad :sad :sad

Heeeeey, the fish love it. Old trick, works good.:cool:

[adblair]

I wasn't crying for the fish.... ;)

[delmore]

snails are GOOD! It's nature's way of telling you that you are overfeeding your fish :D

[sunnygirl]

here's what i did. i took out all the tank water, and reserved 25%. then i removed all plants and decorations, and set them in a dish pan so the snails wouldn't be crawling all over the floor. get a five gallon bucket and fill it up with hot, hot, hot, water. dump the hot water into the tank. all the snails will die, but your bacteria will die, too, so make sure you have stress zyme, or cycle or something like it. siphon out the hot water, and sift through the gravel to remove all the dead snails you can, so they wont pollute the water. next put some hot water in a bowl or ice cream bucket, but not too hot to put your hands in. mix in enough table salt until it can't disonve anymore, and add a little more. dip all plants (including live) and decorations in for about ten seconds. the snails will fall right off, and it kills the eggs, too. when you set up your tank again, add your commercial bacteria every day for about four days to really get your cycle going. with stress zyme or cycle, add 2 tsp. per ten gallons. i've never had any problems with my live plants after the salt dip. i dip them this way before i put them in my tank.

[Grassguy]

What commercial bacteria are you usin, Biospira or an imitation? From what I've heard, Biospira is the only commercial bacteria worth buyin.

Seems to me if you put hot, hot, hot water in the tank, your fish would die too.

[adblair]

I assume she means to take the fish out also....

[Grassguy]

Why didn't she just say to take the tank down and clean it then.

I believe we were trying to get rid of the snails w/o going to that extreme.