Please Help!

[englishbettas]

hi i am im need of some advice,
i have small-ish tank with 4 day old betta fry in it but recently i noticed it had loads of tiny snails.
i am a bit worried as the snails are a lot bigger than the fry. i was wondering if there is a way to get rid of them or stop them breeding so much???
Please help as my mum has also had her tank over run with snails.
any answers would be helpful,
thanks
englishbettas x

 

[NinjaSmurf]

Try putting a peice of lettuce or blanched cucumber in the tank after you turn the lights out, wait a few hours, then check on it. It should have snails on it by now, you can just take it out and throw them away. Another possiblity would be to get an assassin snail, as they eat other snails.

Check out the invertebrate section and check out the pinned articles, you can find other ways to get rid of them, and also find out what kind they might be.

 

[rdd1952]

Getting rid of them is very difficult. The main cause of snail population explosions is over feeding so cutting down on that and eliminating the food source will help. If it's too bad, you may have to clean the tank out and start over.

 

[fishnovice]

Don't worry. Snails are strictly vegetarian so they won't eat fry. I like snails and deliberately keep 3 different speciesmin my tank, including giant apple snails. They are harmless to fish and make great scavengers keeping sand clean.

 

[fauxshow]

You say the tank is small-ish, how small are we talking? There are a lot of species of loaches (clown loaches in particular) that eat those pain in the butt snails. If you have the room and the means to do so, you might consider emptying the tank of fry and letting a few loaches go at it. The only downfall is they can get sorta big and need to be in a group. I'm guessing your tank is too small but the point is, there ARE species of fish that will gobble them up.

 

[NinjaSmurf]

They are enough problems with keeping a betta fry tank clean without adding more fish. And I'm against recommending adding fish (esp. as large and schooling as clowns) just to clear up a snail problem. You still have to take care of those fish, and not everyone can house these guys.

And things need to be done carefully as they are very young still. I would just go the the safer route and maybe add the assassin snail, and keep trying to trap them out of the tank with food. I'm sure you're cleaning up the food pretty regular anyways because of the fry, as that will worsen the water quality.

 

[englishbettas]

They are enough problems with keeping a betta fry tank clean without adding more fish. And I'm against recommending adding fish (esp. as large and schooling as clowns) just to clear up a snail problem. You still have to take care of those fish, and not everyone can house these guys.

And things need to be done carefully as they are very young still. I would just go the the safer route and maybe add the assassin snail, and keep trying to trap them out of the tank with food. I'm sure you're cleaning up the food pretty regular anyways because of the fry, as that will worsen the water quality.

it is ok now i have moved the fry into a clean tank with no snails in and i am goin to thouroughly clean the other one.
thanks for all the advice, appreciated greatly,
englishbettas