SERIOUS snail problem...

What's the setup? What's in there? How much, how often, and what are you feeding?

Snails only get out of control when there is more food available than snails to consume it. Most likely, reducing the food you give the fish, and cleaning the substrate better more frequently will reduce the available food enough the the population declines on its own.
 
Well the snails won't hurt your tank. In fact many of us keep snails in our tank. The problem comes about when there is excess food. Chances are your tank has lots of excess food in it. This is either from decaying plants or overfeeding. The first thing I suggest you do it always use a gravel vacuum when doing a water change, and do this every week. Next feed about half as much as you currently feed to your fish. A small pinch once a day is all fish need.

As for actually getting rid of snails, there are chemicals that do work but they use copper and that is also poisonous to fish. It just kills the snails faster. So I avoid it.

There are some tricks to lower the snail population that include placing a small dish with some food (veggies, algae tabs etc...) on the bottom of your tank. After a few hours to overnight the food will be covered in snail. Take them out and repeat.
 
it is just a 10 gallon tank has a betta ,molly, pleco, and an upside down fish.....
i have never bought a snail.... just had one accidently come with the one of the fish, and then they started breeding like rabbit... but i will start feeding less.. i feed too much and i know it. i do clean with a gravel sucking thingy... but thanks for all your help.... I love this place..
Noodles
 
The tank is crowded with fish right now. Adding a clown loach would be a disaster. Never put fish through the stress of temp moves if you don't need to.

You should be thinking about a future home for that pleco, he will get too big for the tank and create too much waste. Probably fine for now.
 
I had two beautiful apple snails in my tank but they died after 3 months. I was going to get two more but Im not sure what killed them and I don't want to keep killing beautiful snails.
 
Snails can be very intolerant of copper. If the tank was old and had copper based treatments in it before those could still be around. Also it is rare but a copper hotwater from copper pipes can bring copper into an aquarium.

Otherwise it may just have been their time. What did you feed them. Those big snails need extra munchies, the left overs just won't do.
 
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