Infestation Of Plant Snails

[Luceh7]

Ok, so i made a mistake and didnt take the plant snails out, now they've over ridden my tank

Ive tried the veg at the bottom of the tank thing, and the food tablet at the bottom tank, they dont seem to go for it. I was thinking of maybe getting something to put in my tank that will eat them.

I have 1 honey gourami, 6 neon tetra, 3 glowlight tetra, 3 gold neon tetra, 4 guppies and 3 black window tetra. I also have an apple snail which is what im woried about, i need something that will kill the plant snails but leave my apple snail alone.

hope someone can help

 

[Truck]

if your tank is big enough you could get a loach. or some assasin snails will work they will hunt down every last snail and then theyll turn to algae

 

[guppy_man]

Start a little business, sell them to dwarf puffer owners.


You could try a type of loach, i wouldn't suggest a clown loach though, they grow large and need to be in groups. My khuli's eat the very few snails i have.

 

[Truck]

i think assasin snails are the way to go

 

[Honeythorn]

My 12 gallon is ovverun with the things. I don't mind them to be honest.

 

[Corleone]

If you find snails unsightly, a warning about assassin snails: while they breed slowly, so do trumpet snails, which have still been known to grow to pest levels. The assassin snails will also turn to scavenging as the snail population becomes insufficient to feed them, just the same as your existing population, and just like your existing snails will breed to fit the available food source. You do risk trading one infestation for a new, expensive one. Snail traps should be sufficient to keep them in check - leave lettuce in a jar inside the tank overnight, then pull the jar and lettuce out and throw away any snails on it. When you can't trap many anymore, just crunch any visible snails against the glass and let your fish clean up. The snail population will live on excess food and (depending on the species) algae. Most of the time, if they consistently breed out of control, the problem is simply overfeeding. Yoyo loaches are much smaller than clowns, and zebra loaches much smaller than them, and will both aggressively go after snails. Zebra loaches will even kill apple snails much bigger than they are by taking bites out of its foot until it eventually dies.

Edit: Snails do make a better cleanup crew than any set of fish - my "magic combination" is apple, nerite, trumpet, and ramshron snails - between them, they remove uneaten food and most algae from every surface in the tank. The only things they don't deal with are black beard and staghorn algae, but in that case, the only fish that eats the stuff (true siamese algae eater) is often very difficult to find, and is often mislabeled as a flying fox and vice vesa.

 

[murphyk32]

personally i would recommend checking out loaches

 

[Pleccy]

Instead of using fish (they are often unreliable) I would try to eliminate the cause. A primary food source for snails is uneaten fish food, if you cut down on the food the snails will lose their food supply, effectively reducing their numbers.

 

[vinylman]

A couple of ways to go; either cut down on feeding for a couple of days, or wait until 10-15 minutes after lights out then just pick them off the glass. I'd never be without some trumpet snails. For me, they're every bit as natural as fish in an aquarium.