Snails, Snails Every Where

[lordotterby]

I have a plague of snails at the moment and want to get rid of them, I can't use any chemical snail removers as I have 4 porcupine snails and 3 amano shrimps. I don't have another heated tank to move these to so I can sort out the snails, I have tried putting lettuce in and also removing them by hand and getting rid of any eggs, like anyone on here who has had to deal with them it is a never ending battle.

I have been thinking about getting a small loach to get rid of the snails, they would try to eat the porcupine snails as they are to big and have spikes on them. My only worry is if they attacked the shrimp.

any ideas guys?

 

[rocknurworld2006]

you can buy snail trap ive seen them on ebay before just another idea!

 

[lordotterby]

you can buy snail trap ive seen them on ebay before just another idea!

I will look into that, cheers

 

[Inchworm]

Hi lordotterby

Your best bet, since you plan to set up a bigger tank in the future, is to have patience until then. Once that's done you can then move all the fish, snails, and shrimp into it and clean out your existing tank. The only reliable way to get rid of them all is to start the tank over from scratch.

It's a lot of work, but look on the bright side; you won't have a loach you really didn't want or plan on.

 

[lordotterby]

Ah, it hasn't changed it yet. The tank i was going to set up has now been put on hold for a long time.

 

[bradbury1982]

What snails are they x

 

[Alistriwen]

This may not be a desirable solution for you but if you completely bare the tank, not fish, but ornaments, gravel etc you'll be able to find all of the egg sacks and eliminate them by hand. I am trying yes I said trying to cultivate some Ramshorn snails in a 20 gallon tank now because they are really nice brown ones and the fish store wants some. We have the tank bare with some guppies who leave the eggs alone. We can see every sack of eggs in the tank and if we wanted could eliminate them all. As it is, our regular water changes seem to remove most of the juveniles so we only have 4 that are visible after several months. Go figure, everyone else gets infestations. At any rate, a few regular water changes to remove the small ones and egg sacks and then manual removal of the adults should cut down on the population if not eliminate it.

 

[bettawen]

i had a problem with snails in a large tank that i had, but found my red rainbows soon made short work of them lol and havnt seen a snail in months

 

[Futralistic]

Send them to me!!! I have a Spotted puffer that loves them. Lol jk, but really he does love them and I try my best to keep my snail population up in my tropical tank just for him.

 

[freshwaterfishlover]

Put a piece of Letuce in the tank. In the morning the snails will be on the Letuce.

 

[dthoffsett]

I'm having the same problem, I (foolishly) decided to add some Malaysian Trumpet snails to my 29gal tank to keep the sand aerated. Now I have a snail tank with some fish, I'm debating breaking it down and cleaning it out. The bad thing is that you'll most likely have to throw out your filter sponges too since they can get into the sponges and it's nearly impossible to get them all out.

I know my post wasn't much help, just wanted you to know you're not alone. Good luck getting rid of them.

 

[SouthernCross]

I found when I cut down on how much I fed that my snail population also got much smaller...

Also I pick off all the visible ones at water changes.

I've accepted that I'm stuck with them....

 

[merry78]

I found when I cut down on how much I fed that my snail population also got much smaller...

Also I pick off all the visible ones at water changes.

I've accepted that I'm stuck with them....

me too.