Snail Over Population

thanks for all suggestions,

I wonder about my feeding. Ive cut back twice and am now feeding twice a day only a very small amount of flake food. The tank clears in less than five minutes, (the fish eat some and some falls to the bottom. The amount of flakes is hard for me to measure but it is less than 1/4 of what would fit in a teaspoon. I have a population as follows
5 neon tetras
3 gouramis about 2.5"
4 cories about 2"
8 fancy guppies

thanks,

Mark
 
what is your water change and gravel vac schedule like? When you vac, are you n oticing alot of debris? Do you have many live plants and are they healthy?
 
This is a relatively new tank, and I am new to the hobby. The tank took two months plus to cycle and has had fish for just short of two months following the cycle. I am still attempting to get on a regular schedule but for now change about 20% of the water each week. I do have live plants, all low light variety. No, the plants are not what I'd call healthy. They are alive but not great looking. I use the vac each time I cycle and yes it does pick up leftover food and debris and that is why I have reduced the food amount.

Mark
 
MarkInNC said:
This is a relatively new tank, and I am new to the hobby. The tank took two months plus to cycle and has had fish for just short of two months following the cycle. I am still attempting to get on a regular schedule but for now change about 20% of the water each week. I do have live plants, all low light variety. No, the plants are not what I'd call healthy. They are alive but not great looking. I use the vac each time I cycle and yes it does pick up leftover food and debris and that is why I have reduced the food amount.

Mark
Click to expand...

i would up your water change schedule a fair bit. 50% change weekly minimum. for now you could do twice weekly changes at about 30% each for a couple of weeks, and gravel vac each time but don't do a ginormous big vac job as your tank is still new and although the cycle has completed it is still not an established tank. after the two weeks you should see a definite decrease if not eradication of the snails.

and feed a lil less. you could feed just once a day if all your fish are not still small juveniles. and feed variety, as flake alone is not all that rounded a diet and finkids like different foods. would you want to eat cheerios every day for your whole life? lol. try frozen foods such as mysis and bloodworms, they'll love them.
 
OK, it sounds like I may be feeding too much. I will cut back even further and I'll take a look at some frozen food later today to add a little variety. I tried the bottle trap last night and it did "catch" about 25 snails which is a small fraction of the total but a start.

I thought I was doing more water changes that I needed to but will try two a week. I am going to do a water test later this morning and will do a 30% change after the test. I have well water and am using prime even though there is no clorine. I have a 5 gal pail and have been changing about 11 gals which is two of the 5 gal pails plus about a gal into my 3 gal "clean" fill pail. I have a 45 gal tank.

Mark
 
Snail bait ...

I feed my red ramshorn snails green beans from the can, sliced green beans (not french style.) I also feed other canned/frozen vegetables and algae tabs; but, green beans certainly seem to be their favorite. I would try them for a bait.

If you boil whole green beans, allow them to cool and them place a few in the tank, I would think it would be easy to then pull the beans out, and remove the snails and repeat as necessary. But, the bottle trap appeals to me also.

Regards,
TA
 
A couple of assassin snails would work really well in thinning out the population. They can eat around 2 snails a day and they won't mass produce like your normal pest snails.
 
Yoyo loaches and Zebra loaches will eat them up :D
 
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