aquarium dunce

Not sure where they came from but I am getting over run with snails. What can I do to get rid of them. Is there any fish/snail/shrimp that eat snails that is safe to add with other fish??

enthusiast

the snails will come into your tank via anything new you may of added recently, or even as eggs attached to anything new you've added, not so recently. usually they come in by new plants you may have aquired and added to your tank.

lucky for you though there are many dif. types of fish you can add to a tank to take care of the problem, depending on what type of tank you have.

i have a freshwater community planted tank. they are all small fish. in my tank i have 2 yo yo botias that ate an entire festation of snails in what seemed like just a week! it was awesome to not notice them anymore

any fish of the 'Botia" species (clown loach, kuhlie loaches) will eat them (community tank, small fish), many dif. cichlids will also eat them too if you have bigger fish that would go along with the cichlids without anyone getting hurt. As far as shrimp go I've also kept ghost shrimp in my community tank and they will pluck the little babies straight from any snail eggs that are planted around in the fishtank & eat them

suemvb

If they are MTS, try pushing a small bowl into the gravel just before you turn off the lights and putting an algae wafer in the bowl. After about an hour in the dark pull out the bowl and it should be full of snails. I don't know if this would work for other types of snails.

peacemaker92

Hi Dunce, snail problem huh? Snails are very hard to get rid of sometimes as they hide a lot and can really reproduce like mad! I'd agree with Enthusiast, you could use some fish that love eating snails to get rid of them. So I guess Enthusiast has got you covered there. Good luck!

Aldric

i have the same problem tho not as bad as it used to be. I tried all sorts of things from the lettice leaf to the sunken bowl to even buying a snail trap from ebay.... ( didnt work that well ) unfortunatly i dont have the room to get a fish that eats them ( it would have got as big as a whale on all my snails lol )
so the best way ive found to keep a kind of controle over them is cucumber... i feed my bristlenose with cucumber and after about a day in the water the snails like to eat it aswell so thats when i use it to catch as many snails as possible but it has to have been in the water for at least a day for the snails to find it palatable

MyFishkies

I tried the lettuce too bit it made my water cloudy. I'm hoping for a cure cos I'm about to throw out about a pound of java moss that is infested. I'll try the cucumber first but I'm thinking these snails ain't letting go of the java moss.

Aldric

ok so why dont u just take out the java moss pick out all the snails put it back and keep doing that untill uve got most of them out? also check ur filter for the jelly sacks on its side and any plants u have
each jelly egg sack u remove is lots of snailes prevented
but if i was u i would try the cucumber aswell, just waight it down so it dont float the snailks in my tank love the stuff so i just scoop it out and get rid of loads of snails