Apple snails out of control

[Heron]

A couple of months back I bought 3 apple snails to deal with algae in a community tank with giant danios , various gouramis , some mollies and pinstripe butterfly plecs. Yesterday I awoke to find the glass of the tank covered in hundreds of little snails which look to be baby apple snails, the fish have picked of a few of them since but there is still loads left.
As the tank is still covered in black beard algae I will let the babies grow on the hope they will eat it.
Once the algae has gone is there any way to keep the apple snails population under control?
I have read that some apple snails lay eggs above the water line and these can be easily removed but I have never seen this, and I check daily.
Any thoughts gratefully received

 

[PeterFishKeepin]

Apple snail clutches can often be 75+ babies, that's huge and they will keep breeding, unless your lfs can take then I recommend you dispose of the clutch, feed the snails crushed to your fish or grow them out in another tank and sell them or give to LFS for store credit?

 

[BigManAquatics]

Easiest way is to just keep 1 apple snail in the future.

 

[StarGirl]

Snails dont eat BBA. Neither do shrimp. The clutches will always be above the waterline. It may have been behind a HOB filter pipe or outlet?

 

[SparkyJones]

my opinion remove the adults right away, females once laying and fertilized can lay eggs just about every week. to stop where you are the adults have to go. and you have to hunt anything above the water line that is humid/ damp for any other eggs, magnifier, flashlight, whatever tools you might need to make sure you check everywhere the snails could have possible gotten into above the water line and might have laid eggs.

Then give the babies a bit more time to grow, they take a while to mature so they will be easy to collect out of there when they get a bit bigger. they will reduce by picking some out each day, until you are down to one, that isn't mature yet.

if no male left before a female reaches maturity = infertile eggs.

a female can lay eggs even months after mating, and takes like 2-4 weeks for eggs to hatch. Check your tank lid, behind your filter, dark areas with a flashlight, under the tank rim, plant leaves above the surface, everywhere you can think of above the water line for eggs the snails have access to that could be damp or humid that the snails could get into.. in theory a single mature fertilized female could have laid another 2-8 egg clutches from when these eggs were laid and when you noticing the babies, those eggs that will hatch out in the coming weeks.

gotta nip the adults in the bud. then clear out the babies as they are growing. but you have to interrupt the egg laying, and eggs. if you don't go after the eggs that might be there that haven't hatched yet, you'll remove and remove and more and more will appear for a while.

keep just one juvenile and it won't happen again. it won't be mature to have gotten fertilized, so even if it's female it will lay infertile eggs.