snails!

J

Jibby

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Jan 19, 2004
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hello everyone i like your forums very helpful :)
anyway heres the story i bought a plant for my tank and a snail hached out i guess thats where he came from anyway i kinda liked him so i let him be well long story short the plant is gone and now i have like 500 little snails in the tank i couldnt get rid of them the more i took out double that would come back

my tank is 10g consist of 3 fancy guppies and 1 small pleco

is their anything i can get to get rid of the snails? a fish or something. really i dont want to get to many more fish for the tank i like them to have room to move around. ive been saving up for a 55g and a stand :) but that will probably be 3-4 months ahead and i would like to get rid of some of these things :) thanks in advance :D
 
Well loaches are great at eating snails, but the best ones get too big for a 10 gallon tank. If it was a definate thing taht you are moving to a bigger tank then I would say get a couple of yoyoloaches or three (they need groups). But in a 10 gallon for any length of time it probably wouldn't be a good idea.

A quick trick is to pu a lettuce leaf in the tank before bed. In the morning it should be covered in snails. Throw it away. Repeat. You won't get rid of all of the snails but this will eliminate a whole bunch at a time.

It sounds like there is too much food in the tank. Snails tend to explode in population when there is ample food. Try reducing the amount of food you give the fish, that should help control things as well.
 
Also, there are products out there such as "had-a-snail" or "snail away" which kills off the snails and their babies. It's got rave reviews, and so has the lettus leaf method. It's really up to you. Keep in mind, I have been informed that certain meds to remove snails have been named Illegal in the UK and other places.
 
not sure if I just don't know how to use the complicated lettuce or not but I can't seem to get it to work. I've had a bout with snails for about 4 or 5 months now. I was just dipping and trashing them as fast as I could and doing a fairly good job of it. I tried the lettuce by sinking a tuft of it and by floating some leaves and only get a couple snails every once in a while. I get the most snails on the tank sides, especially at the top, just below the tank edge. I can rake my fingers under the lip and knock them off and catch them with a net. When we did a 50% water change in my 55 gallon and discontinued feeding for 5 days trying to lower my nitrate spike, they seemed to drop way back but they're starting to come back now that we've continued feeding. I knocked back our feedings from 2 a day to once a day and occasionally skipping a day. we've also dropped back how much we're feeding. I have 4 large cories, 2 small cories and 4 small pleco's so I'd think there would be too much competition for the leftovers but the snails survive. I have not tried had-a-snail because we are planning to get some dwarf puffers in a 10g in the next few months so we'll have a purpose for the snails at that time. I was given an algae killer once before and told to remove all invertebrates and plants but it didn't affect the snails. had-a-snail is supposed to work but I've never tried. I'm still dipping and trashing. Kyle
 
I woudl saty clear of any of those chemicals. Basically the theory there is that toxin in a low level will killthe nsails but not the fish. But over dosing could wipe out your fish as well. They contain copper salts generally and these have a tendancy to hang around in the tank. If you want things like crabs or snails or freshwater shrimp in the future the remaining copper could kill them off. Try reducing your feedings or increasing your cleaning with a gravel vacuum as a preventive measure.
 
I have a snail tank (for my puffers) and I find that they like Zucchini better then lettuce
 
well...you could add 3 small skunk loaches, but you'd really be pushing the bioload for your tank. they have them at most petsmarts (never seem them at any of my lfssss) for like $1.50 and they stay smaller than yoyos. but, really, you'd be pushing it. your best bet is to just pick them out by hand whenever you see them and deal with it until you upgrade.
 
I had lots of small snails in one aquarium and I added a large mystery snail. Now there is one mystery snail and a very small number of the small snails. The mystery snail ate most of the little snails. Don't know if the mystery snails eat their own kind but it sure ate whatever kind was in there.
 
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