A Loach To Help With Snail Problem?

[NormaJean]

My 120 gallon is infested with snails, it started with only two, I thought 'oh, those are harmless'. Seems I was wrong, a few months later I have hundreds, thousands even. I read that when snails breed constantly it's due to overfeeding however I had this problem before I even cycled the aquarium and added fish. About a hundred or so died off during cycling, apparently it takes much more then 7ppm of ammonia to kill them.. I read about putting a piece of lettuce in the tank, so I tried it, then there were the egg sacks, so I removed those off the live plants and decor, seems I missed a few so I once a again put a piece of lettuce in the tank, then they laid more eggs. I continued to do this for about 2 weeks and then I finally gave up. I'm not putting any chemicals or salt in the aquarium either. So now I'm turning to loaches. I originally planned to get 5 clown loaches since I read they have a slow growth rate of one inch per year or so, and I thought I'd give them away once they got around 7". But since I give attached to things I thought that may not be the best idea. So I looked up some of the snail eating loaches, but they seem to be too aggressive for my peaceful tank. The most aggressive fish I have in there are my 3 angelfish, the rest are small peaceful schooling fish (cories, congo tetras, rainbowfish). Does anyone know of a peaceful snail eating loach that would be the appropriate size for my aquarium?

 

[fluttermoth]

Zebra loaches should be fine. They only grow to three inches or so and are peaceful, IME.

 

[ShinySideUp]

Zebra loaches should be fine. They only grow to three inches or so and are peaceful, IME.

+1 on that. I bought juvenile zebra loaches to clear a snail problem thinking that once they got big enough they would get rid of the snails, perhaps in a few months -- two days after introduction I have no snails! Admittedly, the snails were very small but they have all gone. I'm thinking of introducing snails as food now just to keep the loaches happy!

 

[micahgordon]

I had clown laoches for a time to deal with snails and found them to be relatively effective.  However, clown laoches get too big for average tanks and they only exhibit natural behaviour when kept in groups of 6 or more.  they will also devour many types of aquatic plants.  If you need snail control get assassin snails.  They will eat small and medium sized snails and bottom feed as well.  Ive never had them eat my plants and they look kind of neet.

 

[Baccus]

Depending on the pest species of snail (I am guessing you have Ramshorns because of the egg sacks) then dwarf chain loaches are lively and peaceful. I have 10 with 15 sterbia cory and the dwarf chain loaches tend to just ignore the corys. The dwarf chain loaches do like cruising about all levels of the tank and when its feeding time happily pretend they are more endlers and join in the general food scrum.
I did find that with young/ small loaches it helped them get a taste and into snails by crushing the snails and dropping them in for the loaches to find and scoff. Trust me it doesn't take long for the loaches to sniff out a squashed snail. My other fish also all get in on the act to and have a munch on newly dispatched snails.