Controling snails with fish.

I think I may have heard of bettas eating small snails, but I don't know, sorry!

lisa

catfish ( the predatory ones) are greatly underrated as snail hunters. almost all American cichlids are as well. and beatta's definately do the job.
Dave

Anything you can think of for a 10gal?

use a net and your hands, feed less and snail will be under control.

Feeding less will control snail population of SOME snails, but others will eat the fish or starve them out. You can introduce a less bad snail to outcompete the first and then reduce food. Or, you can put a weekend feeder or piece of zucchini or such in the bottom of the tank. Take out the next day and remove a bunch of snails with it...You'll have to keep up with this though. And definitely use the "spoon of doom" to smush any snail eggs you see (little jelly blobs), the fish will usually eat these once smushed. For a fish in a 10g, a betta might work, dont' know of much else that stays small...but not all bettas will eat the snails...

Emily

firely/Emily is on the right track. I don't recommend one of those weekend feeders, I dislike plaster in my tanks, so should you. Usually a nice leaf of lettuce weighted with a bit of gravel or a couple of larger pebbles does a fine job. It usually has a nice cup shape already to it and if you sink it at night and pull it out in the morning several days in a row it should substantially reduce your snail population. One more thing, snails can actualyl be a nice addition to a tank, in my opinion. We used to hates them my precious, but I posted this and peopleses convinced me to gives them a try, gollum.

Alittle off topic but i found that a Ruff skinned Newt will make stort work of snails. I placed one in my snail tank as a temp home till his hab was compleated and he eat every snail larger then a .5mm.

NOt all snails are bad by anymeans. I wouldn't exactly say the stuff in the weekend feeders is plaster... but well. I actually feed them to my apple snails, they contain good calcium in that plaster stuff and really help their shells grow well. However, I would never use them for their intended purpose...and htey wouldn't find there way into any non-snail tanks. I do find that the phsya pest snails (the foot ball shaped ones) can be bad and harder to control. They are ones that will harm my apple snails. The planorbids (spirally ramshorn snails) aren't as bad, and can be used as population control for the phsya, and then controlled themselves by feeding less. The lettuce trick works well, but you've got to stay on top of it or you'll get another population explosion. As long as you keep the physa population in check though, it should be fine. They are a good clean-up crew, and these snails will actually eat algae...
Emily