Snail Eaters

[Davo86]

Hi, sorry to piggyback on your discussion (hope you don't mind) but I wondered if the assasin snail would be suitable for handling what can only be described as a tadpole snail population explosion! We are talking literally hundereds of the little buggers. They are (I believe) responsible for the death of 3 of my baby Cyprichromis as they all hatched at the same time and put a huge load on the filter in my rearing tank so the water quality plumeted. Basically I want rid now please! I have an 18" cube (holding 100 L) which is home to a pair of shell dwellers and 3 adult sardine cichlids and a 25L rearing tank both of which are harbouring huge populations of snails. How many assasin snails would I need in tanks this size to reduce the population or would some kind of loach be more suitable for the larger tank? All opinions gratefully received.

Thanks

Lauren x

Hi try getting a couple of big lettuce leaves and weighing them down in the tank for a couple of hours. When you go to remove the leaves they will usually be full of snails, which you can easily dispose of.

If you do this a few times you can very quickly reduce the number of snails you have dramatically

 

[scoliofish]

java loaches are pretty cool, they are very similar to kuli loaches but do not have stripes (so just purple) i had quite afew and i loved them to bits and i found they were alot hardyer than the kuli loach (when i added the kulis to my tank along with some jave loachs only the javas survived) i have at least one left even after a nasty death spell in my tank i emtyed the tank and moved a bit if gravel and plants to my new 200l tank (thinking all of them were dead this was 6 months ago) then yesterday i saw it swimin around and it is at least a cenimeter longer than when i last saw it i think i must have moved it when i moved the gravel bt all i am saying is keep them in mind

scolio
p.s they sorted out my snail problem

 

[Tory]

Hi try getting a couple of big lettuce leaves and weighing them down in the tank for a couple of hours. When you go to remove the leaves they will usually be full of snails, which you can easily dispose of.

If you do this a few times you can very quickly reduce the number of snails you have dramatically

Thats an awesome idea, im a soft touch and wont squish em!

Hi, sorry to piggyback on your discussion (hope you don't mind)....

Dont be daft! As far as im concerned, if anything I post can help someone else, then its a good thing!

 

[Sporen]

The lettuce leaves are a good idea, think I will try that to sort out the problem in the rearing tank. I have just cleaned the tank out and managed to siphon out a good 50 of the baby snails and removed the 5 adults so hopefully that should put a stop to any more eggs appearing for now at least. Hopefully a combination of lettuce traps and assasin snails will do the trick. Thank you everyone for your suggestions, Tory thanks for sharing your thread!

x

 

[saltynay]

Sorry if I missread something I have only skim read the previous posts

Khuli loaches do not eat snails they are not botia loaches....

Why do you want eradicate snails? They fill a niche in the aquarium and some people discover that they find the snails more interesting then their fish at times. Snails have to follow the rules of nature even "pest" snails the more food the more snails will be bred and survive. They eat left over fish food which would otherwise rot causing ammonia issues and some are detritivores. I add "pest" snails to my tank and they live perfectly content lives, I also have assassin snails to slow population expansion however assassins prefer some fish foods over live snails so if your overfeeding your fish causing a snail explosion, then add assassins and continue to overfeed you are always going to have a problem.

Cucumber or courgette works better then lettuce for luring snails for manual removal. Squishing them against the glass can cause some species to lay their eggs so you squish one but add 50 more to the tank.

 

[Truck]

botia striata will get rid of snails...they get to around 40 inches

 

[Davo86]

botia striata will get rid of snails...they get to around 40 inches

thats hell of a big botia

think you mean 4 truck

 

[nmonks]

What a great reply!

Let me second the argument here. Snails are more a barometer of aquarium hygiene than anything else. If you have pestilential quantities of snails, you likely have other problems with the tank as well: a dirty substrate, poor plant growth, algae, insufficient mechanical filtration, and so on. In other words, there's organic matter in the tank that shouldn't be there, and hence the snails turn that energy source into more snails.

All my tanks have snails in them, and rarely do they act in a harmful way. I keep a variety of snails in some tanks: typically Physa, Malayan livebearing snails, nerites, Tylomelania, Clea helena. Like shrimps, I find they add a "reef tank" quality to small planted tanks that fish don't provide.

Cheers, Neale

Why do you want eradicate snails? They fill a niche in the aquarium and some people discover that they find the snails more interesting then their fish at times. Snails have to follow the rules of nature even "pest" snails the more food the more snails will be bred and survive. They eat left over fish food which would otherwise rot causing ammonia issues and some are detritivores. I add "pest" snails to my tank and they live perfectly content lives, I also have assassin snails to slow population expansion however assassins prefer some fish foods over live snails so if your overfeeding your fish causing a snail explosion, then add assassins and continue to overfeed you are always going to have a problem.

 

[Truck]

botia striata will get rid of snails...they get to around 40 inches

thats hell of a big botia

think you mean 4 truck

woops how did that 0 get there