Skunk loach compatibility and snail control

[ashlyjames]

Hi,

I am going to discover the pleasure/pain of snails very soon in my 10 gallon tank since my last weekly water change revealed a few pin head size snails.
(I should have hair dryed the amazon sword before planting :-))
The snails are all under the relatively large gravel and are not showing above substrate at the moment.
After reading about how snails can turn into an all out plague I went out and bought a
couple of skunk loaches.

Question:
1) IS the skunk loach a good snail eater.?
2) Is the skunk loach compatible with my Angel Fish/guorami/guppie?
3) Am I in for a tank breakdown in the near future because of the snails?

Please :help:

[Holly9937]

What all is in your tank? Most angels and many gouramis need bigger than a 10g so the compatibility problem might be an overstock, not them getting along with each other :o

[ashlyjames]

I am having BIGGER tank dreams everyday, but the apartments is closing in on me so I guess I will not be able to upgrade till I move to the house next year.

here is my specs:
10 Gallon
------------
fish
1 - medium pearscale angel fish
1 - small leopard angel fish
1 - blue gourami
1 - female guppy

plants
1 -amazon sword


temp 80 F

20 Gallon
---------
1 - medium Black moor
2 - medium goldfish
1 - Ple*o

[mwood322]

Upside: Skunk Loaches are good snail eaters, and stay fairly small, around 3 inches.

Downside: They are terrors to just about everything with fins, especially long finned slow moving fish.

I have 7 of them in a tank with other large aggressive loaches, and giant danios. They were beating on my more peaceful loaches pretty badly.

--Mia

[phoenix]

People have different experiences all the time with snails and yours may vary as well. Keep in mind that just because you get some snails in your tank it doesn't necessarily mean that an all out infestation will follow. The snails hitched a ride into one of my tanks on some plants that I bought online. I transplanted them into the other tank because they've never harmed my plants and they do work hard to eat their share of algae. The populations in both of the tanks are somewhat numerous but no where near booming.

[ashlyjames]

Update ...
I returned the Skunk loach because they started nipping at my angel fish.
Toronto Super Pet would take it back but would not give me a credit but get this, the clerk suggested that if they were dead I would get a refund!

I made a few calls and was glad that BIG ALs would give me trade in value and here is the kicker, since they sell these for twice the price than super pet they gave me half the price which equals cost at Super Pet.(7$ CAD) :D


I bought a couple of tiny Clowns loaches but one seems to be very shy. I was told they grow very slowly so am not thinking about upgrading the 10Gallon till next year.

OH.......I havent seen snails lately :D