an unwanted snail

[IKeepAngels]

help! as the title says, i have an unwanted snail in my tank. it's shell is transparent and i am very disgusted. i will remove it but what else should i do to avoid more snails?

 

[Colin_T]

LOL, someone else who doesn't like snails, welcome to the dark side

Just check the plants for small clear jelly like lumps and snails before you put them in the tank. You can quarantine plants in a plastic storage container for a couple of weeks and that will allow snail eggs to hatch and you can squish em.

You don't need to dechlorinate tap water for quarantining plants so you can fill up a bucket with tap water and put the plants in that for a few weeks.

You can dip the plants in a copper sulphate solution and that will kill snails but not always the eggs.
*NB* If you use copper make sure you rinse and soak the plants well (with fresh water) before adding them to the tank. Copper will kill invertebrates like shrimp so you need to get any copper of the plants before adding them to the main tank.

Most people just have a look for snails and remove them. Then shake the plants in a bucket of water before checking again. Scrape off any eggs or snails, rinse a couple more times and then add them to the tank.

 

[Jessie J.]

Maybe you can get some assassin snails if the methods Collin posted don't fit into your schedule; they eat pest snails but leave other inverts/fish/plants alone. They are not that good at quickly taking down large populations but are good for preventing them.

 

[NickAu]

If you use copper to kill the snail your tank may never be invert safe again.

Why dont you want snails? They keep the tank cleaner than you ever could.

 

[Jessie J.]

Snails will often eat live plants along with dead ones and can look unsightly crawling along the glass; not my opinion, though.

 

[NickAu]

Never had a snail eat live plants.

 

[Essjay]

Neither have I.

In my main tank I have those tiny ramshorn snails that come with live plants, Physid snails (commonly called bladder, trapdoor or tadpole snails), Malaysian trumpet snails and several types of nerite snail.

Snails are a very useful part of a tank's ecosystem.

 

[IKeepAngels]

LOL, someone else who doesn't like snails, welcome to the dark side

Just check the plants for small clear jelly like lumps and snails before you put them in the tank. You can quarantine plants in a plastic storage container for a couple of weeks and that will allow snail eggs to hatch and you can squish em.

You don't need to dechlorinate tap water for quarantining plants so you can fill up a bucket with tap water and put the plants in that for a few weeks.

You can dip the plants in a copper sulphate solution and that will kill snails but not always the eggs.
*NB* If you use copper make sure you rinse and soak the plants well (with fresh water) before adding them to the tank. Copper will kill invertebrates like shrimp so you need to get any copper of the plants before adding them to the main tank.

Most people just have a look for snails and remove them. Then shake the plants in a bucket of water before checking again. Scrape off any eggs or snails, rinse a couple more times and then add them to the tank.

thanks! i was able to remove one of TWO! eww

 

[IKeepAngels]

If you use copper to kill the snail your tank may never be invert safe again.

Why dont you want snails? They keep the tank cleaner than you ever could.

i know they keep the tank clean it's just that, i get weird "tingles" in my body whenever i see one plus, my family, except my younger siblings and dad, hates my aquarium. They'll hate it more if they find out it has snails

 

[IKeepAngels]

Snails will often eat live plants along with dead ones and can look unsightly crawling along the glass; not my opinion, though.

that's another thing. i've read before that some snails can damage the roots of floating plants , which i am very fond of.

 

[IKeepAngels]

Neither have I.

In my main tank I have those tiny ramshorn snails that come with live plants, Physid snails (commonly called bladder, trapdoor or tadpole snails), Malaysian trumpet snails and several types of nerite snail.

Snails are a very useful part of a tank's ecosystem.

i've considered adding snails before nut i just can't handle the way they look. My dad told me that when he was a kid, he used to have to remove golden apple snails from their rice farms and no matter how many buckets of snails he got, he had to get the same amount the same day. we both are grossed out of snails but anyway, i do respect snail keepers and their opinions about snails, their shells can look pretty at times too . a type invert i want to keep though for a very long time though are shrimps. i just can't keep them because of my angel

 

[NickAu]

that's another thing. i've read before that some snails can damage the roots of floating plants , which i am very fond o

I have never had a problem with snails damaging plants.

Did you eat the Mystery snails?

 

[IKeepAngels]

I have never had a problem with snails damaging plants.

Did you eat the Mystery snails?

oh no! my dad had to remove them because they were eating the rice and other crops which they have to sell. golden apple snails were actually introduced to my country to feed the poor but then, they didn't like it so they released into the wild, causing it to be an invasive species. and since they breed very fast, they arrived to a lot of places including my dad's family farm when he was young. now i don't know if they are still removing snails or not since my family now lives far away from that place

 

[Byron]

When it comes to aquarium snail species, some will eat plants, some will not. The small snails that sometimes arrive "unwanted" on plants, wood, etc are likely going to be species that do not eat healthy live plants, such as bladder snails, pond snails, Malaysian Livebearing Snails. Ramshorn snails are considered safe with plants according to most sources, though some aquarists have said differently, so I just point that out. If you end up with some of the much larger species, plants might be in their normal diet depending.

Snails are an important part of a healthy ecosystem in the aquarium. They achieve things you simply cannot manage without them. Yes, you can do without them, but having them does make for a more stable and healthy biological system.

If you are intent on removing snails regardless, never use chemicals; anything really effective will without question harm something else, be it plants, invertebrates, bacteria or fish. There is quite a lot of live microscopic food in a healthy aquarium that fish eat and you do not want to be poisoning this, not to mention that all chemicals added to the water do get inside the fish.

 

[Fishmanic]

also if you don't overfeed your fish, the snail population won't grow too quickly...they feed on excess food that the fish don't eat first.