snail takeover in freshwater tank

Snail populations are limited by the available food supply. If you're having a population explosion it means there is too much snail food around. You may be feeding too much or not vaccing enough. Most methods of controlling them will be temporary unless you can figure out the root cause.

Loaches are notorious snailkillers. There are large species, like Clowns; medium species, like yo-yos; and smaller species, like zebras and skunks. Temperaments vary, but they're mostly nice, interesting, playful fish. Check out loaches.com for more info. They're bottom-dwellers so they may skirmish with the cats.

The easiest non-fish method seems to be putting a piece of lettuce on the floor of the tank in the evening. In the morning it should have a whole bunch of snails under it. Discard, repeat as necessary.

But if you don't figure out why they're there in the first place, they'll be back.

HTH

EDIT: I'm agreed with Richer below on snail-killing chemicals. I wouldn't put them in my tank for love nor money.

EDIT: Agreed with Kit below as well. Clowns get big. They don't belong in little tanks. Big loaches in big tanks, little loaches in little tanks. Also bad to overcrowd the bottom.

Agreed... snail population explosions are usually caused by either overfeeding, too much decaying plant (or fish) material, or a combination of these factors.

The most obvious ways of controlling a snail population is to reduce your feedings, remove as much dead/dying plant material as possible (assuming you keep plants), and to obviously remove dead fish. Fish need surprisingly little food to survive and do well on. I normally feed my fish enough to eat in about 30-60 seconds once a day and they're all doing great.

Ways of eliminating snails are varied. Ranging from manual removal to fish to chemicals. If I had a snail problem, I would prefer manual removal, carpguy's method works well. With a combination of manual removal and strict control of feedings, you should more or less eliminate the snail population.. or at least keep it very small. Fish such as clown loaches, yoyos, etc. will work as well. I usually consider this a second to last resort, as adding snail eaters mean you'll have a larger bioload in your tank... depending on your tank, this may be acceptable.. or not. Chemicals are a desperate last resort. I never consider using it. IMHO, I would rather put up with a large snail population than risk chems. If anything, you'd probably wipe everything else in your tank out before the snail population even decreases.

HTH
-Richer

Release the clown loaches!
(only if your tank is a suitable size)

Do u want ANY! snails if not use a chem called HAD A SNAIL the stuff works wonders, just put a few drops in and let it sit for a couple days...

PEACE

SNEAK

get clown loaches but keep the water very good quality because they are very susseptible to ich.

GET A YO YO LOACH!!! I love my yoyo loach. I too had a snail EXPLOSION. it was utterly useless to take them out everyday cause they breed like mad. then I searched these forums, the answer was YO YO Loach. I bought 1 & haven't seen ANY snails lately, just empty carcases. even had the pleasure of watching the lil guy suck out a few snails.

Our solution to the snail problem was to add a dwarf puffer to one of our tanks. These little swimming beans stay small (around 1") and have a huge appitite for snails. The tank he's in usually stays clear of snails and we capture snails from other tanks for him to devour.

I've never had a problem with our dwarf puffer nipping at any of the other fish in our 10 gallon which includes 6 neon tetras, 2 albino corys, and a bumblebee catfish (Microglanis Iheringi). There could be a risk of a dwarf puffer attacking or nipping other fish if they weren't kept well fed with live prey or if a tank had few plants or ornaments that would allow them to establish a territory. You will also have to remove their snail leftovers to prevent ammonia/nitrite spikes from decaying snail flesh (this might be true for other snail eaters as well).

The capture method Carpguy mentioned works pretty well if you don't want to add any snail eating fish. You'll still have a few snails in the tank but you won't have 100s. I've used this method to snag a few snacks for our puffer. Doing this a few days after cutting drastically back on food should provide a good catch of snails.

I'd avoid the snail poison approach. It can make your fish ill (depending on the species you have) and, with so many dead snails, create havoc on your tank's natural cycle.

I had problems with loaches getting ich. I never had a snail problem when I had Kribs in the tank. Then I moved the kribs to another tank and shazam, snails appeared (without adding any new plants or fish)! I put the kribs back in the tank and the snail population went down dramatically. The key is to have a snails predator (dwarf cichlid, puffer or loach), don't overfeed and do routine water changes. I change the water about 50% every week and only feed my fish once per day, 4-5 days per week.