Snails

[Maria Ashton]

I seem to have had en explosion of snails in my tank, I think they came from a plant which I introduced and now I am struggling to keep their numbers down. I have read about Assasin snails and have a few in my tank but they are making little or no impact on the other snail population. I read that I should try reducing feeding the fish as this lowers the nutrients in the water which the snails feed off. I tried this and noticed that the discus took to eating the snails, (they are very small snails), but a few days later levels are back up and withholding feeds for the discus causes the leader of the pack to become quite aggressive, he will also hog the food when it comes and not allow any other fish, bar his mate, near it.

Any ideas?

[Skip]

when you see one.. crush it with your fingers... :)

best way! :)

[DLock3d]

Clown loaches, assassin snails and water changes are the only methods I've used. I'm using all of them now. My clown loach is so fat now it's not even funny. It's cut back significantly on the snails I see during the day. Once my auto timer flips off, if I flip it back on I notice several. You could think about dipping your plants if they are that much of a problem. As far as feeding goes, not sure what you're feeding but I drop food at opposite ends of the tank. At the end of the day, there's always going to be a few discus that get more food than the others.

[nwehrman]

I had hundreds of snails in my shrimp tank- put in assassin snail and at last nights water change I was only able to find one snail other than the assassin's. Will wait till I am 100% sure gone then will move some of the assassins-to my larger planted tank (although the few in there are minimizing the snails- just not as quickly) 4 were in the 10 and 4 in the 150 also. But like I said the 10 was infested! Each assassin only eats about 1 snail a day....so give it time. Or add more assassins!

Nicole

[Chicago Discus]

I had snails so bad a few years back when I bought some plants that I had to go bare bottom and get rid of all the substrate to kill the snails. You can use copper but its really bad for your discus so I would not recommend that product. The only thing that worked successfully was getting rid of all the substrate and going bare bottom for a while and then adding some new substrate after they were all gone. take away there home and they will disappear. Josie

[typicalalex1]

I had this problem once. There were literally hundreds of them from what started out as only a few from a plant.
Everytime i cleaned my filter, i would find loads of them in there.

The best thing to do is buy clown loaches, they destroy the population in no time.

Clown loaches dont do well with plants sometimes, so you can always try a lettace leaf.

Tie a bit of string around a bit of lettace, lower it to the bottom of the tank and leave it there over night. In the morning, the lettace leaf will be covered with them. Simply take it out as dispose of the snails.

[ericatdallas]

Sell them on eBay, apparently people will buy them....

[jimg]

flubendazole

[laborelch]

flubendazole

+1, and make sure you remove the dead ones after treatment, otherwise they will foul your water. Especially important for MTS that hide in the substrate.

[nc0gnet0]

+2 flubendazole stops then dead in their tracks. And it is safe even with cherry shrimp in the tank.

[Skip]

+2 flubendazole stops then dead in their tracks. And it is safe even with cherry shrimp in the tank.

really?! who has it?

[Orange Crush]

I would avoid using chemicals especially if you might put shrimp in your tank someday. Clown loaches are great but will get to be about 12" long. Gouramis will eat snails happily also you can try putting a piece of cucumber in the tank and just before the lights come on in the morning take the cuke out with all of the snails on it and repeat daily for awhile.
Make sure you keep the algae under control too or they will have a constant food source and breed like crazy.

[Orange Crush]

Yoyo loaches work well too and only get to be about 6".....

[Maria Ashton]

Interesting re the Yoyo loaches, thanks.

I used a wormer with flubendazole and it did kill all the snails in my tank but there were so many that despite the large water changes I had a problem with the quality of my water for a while so not keen on going down that route again.

[RudeDogg1]

Polka dot ( botia kubotae) loaches are a better choice than yoyo's. They arnt as boisterous as yoyos and only get to about 5 inches and have a better pattern

[damba]

Can you borrow some Paretroplus - the best snail muderes. Sadly thry are bad company for snails. Of they are trumpet snails they can be hard to erradicate as the babies are born live and in large numbers. They also easily propogate in the filter...
Squashing them when you see them is good. As a positive they do keep the substrate nicely clean and eat up any scraps. I quite like them.

Rydw i'n Cwmry

Sent from my GT-I5800 using Tapatalk

[Maria Ashton]

I have too many snails, I dont mind a few but its ridiculous. I looked up Paretroplus and not sure they would be compatible with discus, also not sure where I could get some from but will look out for them. Thanks

[Schmolly]

Loaches, assassin snails and remove any you can see!