Snails here snails there, snails everywhere

Hi everyone, I recently got some plants from my lfs, that had been in their tanks. At the time, I didn't really notice that they had a small snail infestation, but after about a week of bringing the plants home, I've got more Malaysian trumpet snail (based on pictures on the internet) that i can count. I know snails can multiply extremely quickly, and I don't want another mouth to feed, so how can I get rid of them?

 

Make sure your not overfeeding. You can put in a piece of cucumber or lettuce, something like that, leave it for a while, and then take it out with all the snails on it, repeat this multiple times. Or just embrace the snails like I have, they are beneficial.

 

You don't really have to worry about them unless it bothers you i.e. there're too many of them making your tank unsightly.

Pest snails multiply very quickly. When I had my 60 gallon community tanks, my substrate was absolutely covered with them.

I had pest snails survive in a mop bucket with dirty water for a month. These snails will thrive and reproduce like cockroaches. Don't worry, you won't have to worry about feeding them.

You can also donate them to someone who keep Pufferfish. They'll gladly come and take them.

 

You can siphon them out when you do water changes when you get too many. They keep your substrate stirred up, it's good for your plants.

 

Oh okay... i guess, i'll just leave em then, but also i'm a bit concerned because there's at least a good number of them, over 20 i'd assume and i was just wondering if there were too many of them, would they compete for food over my bn pleco?

 

Ok the thing with pest snails. when you first get them their population usual explodes. This is because there’s lots of food in the tank. Once they eaten all of the food the population tend to decrease. Unless you’re over feeding. Now mts will live in your substrate for most of the day with 1 or 2 migrations to the top of the tank. They are my secret weapon for growing plants! Plants just grow with mts. The mts while in your substrate will eat any dead or dying roots. Meaning plants allways have new roots. I have one tank without them and that is my problem tank. Unforunatly that tank has clown loaches. Who are like the early morning robin who can hear the worms under the dirt. No snail excapes them .

 

just a question, it might be dumb... i don't have loaches but can i feed these guys to my goldfish as a snack, they seem like good protein?

 

Thing is mts have a hard shell. Not sure if the goldfish will be able to get to the snail. But it can’t hurt to try.

 

Oh okay... i guess, i'll just leave em then, but also i'm a bit concerned because there's at least a good number of them, over 20 i'd assume and i was just wondering if there were too many of them, would they compete for food over my bn pleco?

Are there only MTS or is it a mix of types? Just curious.

My snails compete with my loaches & corys for food ... big time & you won't have just 20 of them for long. I transfer snails as food into my betta & pea puffer tanks regularly. I've had no luck going the fresh vegetable & scoop route as the veg is inevitably consumed immediately & the remaining bits leave a floating mess.

What has worked for me has been sinking a large wafer. It takes a minute or two to soften enough for most of the snails to feed on it. Once they've congregated on it, I net them out by the dozen. Whatever of the wafer remains, more snails come & I net them out too.

Because I'm concerned that my bottom feeders get fed too, for general feeding I break up wafers into small bits & place them widely across the tank, including directly into the lairs of the bottom feeders. Too, the fish seem to have little trouble breaking up a heap of snails & sucking the wafer up themselves. They won't starve competing with snails in my experience.

Hope it helps!

 

got it thanks for the advice,(i have a betta in the tank with snails, but it seems to be rather scared of them? maybe she's just not used to them) i'm 99% sure that there are mts only because that's what the lfs tanks were infested with and those are the only snails that i can see... another question because i have so many snails, and many of them are inevitably going to die once there is not a lot of food in the tank anymore, if i don't see their carcasses and i don't remove them, will i have a water quality issue?

 

As 86 ssinit said, MTS are a bit different than bladder snails. Most bettas I've housed love to hunt bladder snails but tend to leave MTS alone to the point that they grow large & visibly hang around tanks like decor.

As for water quality & dead pest snails... bettas & pea puffer eat the snails leaving only shells behind. Any snail bodies left behind are quickly eaten by other snails. In my experience, no matter how many snails are scooped out, more will remain that you don't see & they're happy to eat their buddies. I don't scoop out empty shells & haven't seen water quality problems from leaving them.

 

I have at least 3 and maybe 4 different volunteer snails.

 

For a snail trap. Take a. Small Tupperware and drill snail sized holes in it. About 10. Put an algae wafer in it with a small rock to sink it (with top on). Snails go in but don’t get out.

 

For a snail trap. Take a. Small Tupperware and drill snail sized holes in it. About 10. Put an algae wafer in it with a small rock to sink it (with top on). Snails go in but don’t get out.

got it... thanks... ill set it up right now

As 86 ssinit said, MTS are a bit different than bladder snails. Most bettas I've housed love to hunt bladder snails but tend to leave MTS alone to the point that they grow large & visibly hang around tanks like decor.

As for water quality & dead pest snails... bettas & pea puffer eat the snails leaving only shells behind. Any snail bodies left behind are quickly eaten by other snails. In my experience, no matter how many snails are scooped out, more will remain that you don't see & they're happy to eat their buddies. I don't scoop out empty shells & haven't seen water quality problems from leaving them.

ok sounds good

 

just a question, it might be dumb... i don't have loaches but can i feed these guys to my goldfish as a snack, they seem like good protein?

In the past, I had goldfish that would knock the snail off the side of the tank and suck/eat them out of the shell.

 

You could also opt for assassin snails. I know more snails sounds like a crazy idea but, they will hunt and eat other snails and not over populate. I personally like them(*mts) for my plants and the fact that my substrate is constantly being turned(as stated by others above)but, as also stated, it's a matter of preference. We all do what works best for us. Best of luck to you!

 

Love my mts. Wouldn’t be without them now.

 

eh... i guess i might like them later, but for now they seem more like pests to me... but if its good for my plants, i guess i might as well keep them. anyway, there are a lot more than i think there was yesterday, but i left the snail trap there overnight and it caught a good bunch of them. i split the ones that i caught evenly between the rest of my planted tanks. i threw a few into the goldfish tank, and the goldfish seemed to be interested in eating them.

 

If you wasn’t sure on them I’d not of moved them to other tanks They mostly hide anyway once settled and it’s not super hard to lower the population. As mentioned above don’t be alarmed by an initial boom of them, it’ll settle down.

 

eh... i guess i might like them later, but for now they seem more like pests to me... but if its good for my plants, i guess i might as well keep them. anyway, there are a lot more than i think there was yesterday, but i left the snail trap there overnight and it caught a good bunch of them. i split the ones that i caught evenly between the rest of my planted tanks. i threw a few into the goldfish tank, and the goldfish seemed to be interested in eating them.

Ok be prepared the tanks you’ve added them to may also have explosions of them. These snails find food under the gravel and will reproduce to the amount of food.

 

I just discovered several baby “bonus” snails that came with the plants I just bought. I still don’t have fish in the tank, so I figure they can help with creating a bio load and cycling the tank.