# best way to get rid of pest snails?



## Dominic (19 May 2014)

I have literally millions of pest snails in my tank. They are nibbling on my frogbit that i put in there the other day and i am not happy! Whats the best way to get rid of them apart from assassins? (planning on having a low ph)


----------



## nduli (19 May 2014)

Same issue, thinking of going with assassin though as I have shrimp and chemical approach will kill them. Snail trap maybe?


----------



## X3NiTH (19 May 2014)

I find that when I'm feeding the shrimp with pellets the snails usually get to it before the shrimps do so its easier to manually extract them. I use a 20mm syringe with a long piece of air line attached to my long planting tweezers and suck them out, small ones up the spout the big ones stuck on the end plucked one by one.

From past experience, I had tiger barbs in my tank that caused my snails to flee to the darkest corner of the aquarium only to die en masse from starvation due to fear of being eaten. I found about 100 dead snails buried below my substrate air pump a few years back after a tank gut (only place the barbs couldnt reach), I had seen the tiger barbs knocking them from the glass and sucking them out their shells, I had wondered where they all went.


----------



## Dominic (19 May 2014)

I was thinking snail trap too nduli, its getting annoying. What do you do, just cut a bottle in half, put the top end of the bottle in the bottom half upside down, and put a bit of cucumber in there? 

Its going to be impossible to completely eradicate them isnt it? My tank IS empty though. Just plants. But i am planning on keeping shrimp- .what should i do? 

and thats a good idea xenith. Did you manage to completely eradicate them in the end? And thats really cool! I didnt know that!


----------



## X3NiTH (19 May 2014)

I put four in my tank and they decimated the snail population. Unfortunately once the snails had run away to hide the barbs ignored the courgette I was feeding them that they happily ate before discovering the escargot! They then bullied each other to death because four is not enough for a peaceful group apparently (5 and up is best), it was either that or the chloramine that must have been added to the water, I live in Edinburgh and this was around the same time the tram works were going on, so inevitable really. I was a water sitter and eschewed using dechlor, until I found out about chloramine. I suppose that could have done the snails in, it was en masse and the graveyard of shells was entirely under the substrate air stone and nowhere else in the tank, but the barbs were smashing their way through the population before they disappeared.

Getting something to scavenge the eggs might work, but I have no clue what would attempt to eat the big bags of jelly.

I have seen my tetras eat the snails that fall from my Frogbit, its a mad dash to get to the snail before its had a chance to go 'oops' and pop itself back into its shell on the free fall.


----------



## Dominic (19 May 2014)

Hmmm, i did have a thought on the pakistani loaches (chain loach, yoyo loaches, etc). I work at a fish store so i'm sure they would let me borrow two or three for a couple of weeks. Only problem is i'm concerned they are going to decimate the plant population too. Am i right? 

And did you have a problem with snails eating frogbit?


----------



## mikka23 (19 May 2014)

I got zebra loaches (botia striata), not see a snail since and one of my favourite fish.


----------



## X3NiTH (19 May 2014)

At that point in time the only thing that I could successfully grow under the default 9w PL of an AquaStart was fistfuls of Java Sword and Microsorium Pteropus, not a nibble on any of it. 

The Frogbit I have growing in my tank at the moment is an unstoppable reproduction machine that if the snails are eating it, I don't notice it and I have a lot of snails (I am overfeeding my massively overstocked main tank to prevent attacks on my Red Rilli shrimp), so have a correspondingly large snail population. My pH drops from 6.8 to 5.4 to get a blueish green drop checker, so the snails are slowly being done in by the acid environment (I've already had to rescue my onion nerite which has a shell breach and a bad smell, I've not seen her since I put her on the windowsill in the floater overspill planter). If they are eating the frogbit, and if I see occasional nibbled leaves its leaves that die of when they get accidentally submerged for a period of time. 

I'll need to get some red ramshorns to see if they'll outcompete the pond snails. At least they are better to look at, lol!


----------



## tam (19 May 2014)

When you say planning on a low ph, is it snail friendly at the moment? If so you could pop some assassins in temporarily and then rehouse them. I put one in a snail infested 75l and it ate them all. Not sure how long the process takes but it seemed quite fast and no snails since.


----------



## Dominic (19 May 2014)

mikka23 said:


> I got zebra loaches (botia striata), not see a snail since and one of my favourite fish.


Thats great mate, how long did it take them to clean up all the snails? And did they nibble or uproot any plants or anything? 

xenith, at first I noticed leaves turning yellow and dying off (got them last tuesday) and I just assumed they were damaged in transit or usual meltdown when plants are moved from one tank to another. Then i started noticing little holes and masses of snail eggs on the underside of brittle-looking leaves, and I had already had a bad experience with frogbit around a year ago ( I have always had a heavy snail population) and now I think i've found the culprit- snails. Yes definitely ramshorns are way better to look at than ordinary pond snails lol. They arent as destructive are they? 

and tam, the pH is around 7 at the moment, but once I get the co2 running, it will hopefully drop to around 6-7. I am hoping to keep chocolate gourami. Do you think this would be okay for assassins?


----------



## X3NiTH (19 May 2014)

Looking at my tanks it appears the magic bullet for getting snails in one place for extraction is to chuck in a couple of pieces of Ebi Dama Special. When put in both my tanks the snails are the only thing that will eat it (unless I'm doing something wrong with it?), and I bought it especially as a treat for my CRS's and they won't touch it, the packet burnt such a big hole in my wallet as well. Lol at least it's good for something!


----------



## Dominic (19 May 2014)

Thats a shame dude! Yeah at least its good for something lol! I'll just try a couple of things and see if they work, quite tempted to try the snail trap thing.


----------



## mikka23 (19 May 2014)

It was quite a while ago when I first got them but from what I can remember they were very quick in getting rid of the snails.  I still have them after a couple years and haven't had a problem with them eating plants.


----------



## sciencefiction (20 May 2014)

Any snails multiply to the amount of food and organics in the tank. That same actually applies to cherry shrimp too. The more you feed the faster they'd breed. Thankfully there don't sell specialized chemicals for extermination of cherry shrimp but at times I wonder whether I've problem with the snails or the shrimp.
I started with 5 small shrimp a couple of years back now I have 5 tanks with shrimp because I haven't tried killing them and I keep feeding them for some reason 

A large cherry shrimp population will outcompete for food most snails, especially pond snails(pest snails) and even ramshorns. I can barely see a pond snail in my only shrimp tank and they used to rule the world before cherries were introduced as I used it as a fry tank so overfeeding was a regular.
In another tank I keep seeing a couple of ramshorn snails for the last year, no more and I can't see any other species of snails anymore in it. Don't know where they all went.  When I feed the shrimp, they make a nice red carpet!


----------



## X3NiTH (20 May 2014)

I think I've just made an interesting correlation between my water parameters and my snail population. I keep blaming my bogwood for a decline in pH (its been submerged almost 6 years and is not making the water tannic to any noticeable degree), its dropped it a little maybe. Thing is I keep having to drop my pH point down to get a lime green drop checker. In 3 months of co2 injection EI with 50% weekly WC I've gone from yellow/green dc @ pH 5.8 (gasping fish) to green/blue @ pH 5.4 (fish fine). I'm Edinburgh tap, dKH3ish Gh5ish, all lies of course because I'm not on the co2/KH charts, because from reading up here my KH is comprised mostly 'not' from carbonates. With this in mind it now appears likely that the population explosion of snails in my tank appears to be growing at a rate that is crashing my KH very slowly by sucking up all the carbonates that I can provide, even with the water changes. Is this even possible?

If it is, it looks like they're going to do themselves in eventually when they run out of carbonates, probably reach an equilibrium before then, but if they do then I expect my KH will go the other way for a bit when all the empty shells dissolve in the super low pH I will need to reach for a green drop checker!


----------



## Edvet (20 May 2014)

Try to borrow a puffer? (Colemesus asselus)


----------



## Alastair (20 May 2014)

Or Esha Gastropex. Harmless to shrimp but wipes out all snails. Just remember to pick out the dead ones or they'll cause a spike of ammonia 

Sent from my D6503 using Tapatalk 2


----------



## jose_j (20 May 2014)

Hi,

I have done a DIY trap, its very effective and you will get mostly all the snails in a single night while you are sleeping. Just put some veggies or fish food inside and have a good night.

You can get the clear plastic part from a CD box. The other components are just cable ties and a wooden skewer.

Just have a look to the pictures and you will get the idea. Snails can enter but cannot go out. You also can improve it adding another entrance at the rear.

Hope it will be useful for you.

Cheers,

Jose


----------



## parotet (20 May 2014)

Brilliant!... And cheap


----------



## NatureBoy (20 May 2014)

if you keep the water on the acidic side of neutral pH they can't form their carbonate shells...this definitely keeps the population in check


----------



## Dominic (21 May 2014)

Thank you for all the tips guys! So are you saying once my cherries have multiplied, they will outcompete the snails for food, resulting in a decimation of snails? thats good cos I have just purchased 9 cherry shrimp earlier, all of which are in my holding tank for my otos. I noticed one of them being berried too   Gonna do a 10% waterchange on my new tank tomorrow to hopefully get rid of nitrates, and then i'll chuck the otos and cherries in. Daaamn they're gonna have a feast  

If worst comes to worst i'll get some esha gastropex alistair  

Also, i will probably just try making one of those snail traps just for kicks, that looks like an awesome idea! lol  



NatureBoy said:


> if you keep the water on the acidic side of neutral pH they can't form their carbonate shells...this definitely keeps the population in check


Is a low pH bad for all snails? 

Does it depend more on the kH and gH?


----------



## EnderUK (21 May 2014)

poor snails  I found what I think is a brown ramshorn in my nano last night. it's staying along with all the other random inverts I have in that tank.


----------



## sciencefiction (21 May 2014)

Dominic said:


> Thank you for all the tips guys! So are you saying once my cherries have multiplied, they will outcompete the snails for food,


 
Yes, in a shrimp and snail only tank my shrimp outcompete the snails eventually and I barely have snails in them though I feed the shrimp daily.  It will take months until you have a large enough cherry population though.
If you've got predatory fish in with the shrimp, the shrimp will be unlikely to multiply enough to compete with snails but then in that case you just shouldn't overfeed the tank and clean it of dead leaves, etc..


----------



## Dominic (21 May 2014)

EnderUK said:


> poor snails  I found what I think is a brown ramshorn in my nano last night. it's staying along with all the other random inverts I have in that tank.


Haha i dont mind them until they start eating my plants!  Yeah i like ramshorns, they dont seem to multiply as much as the ordinary pond snails. you seen the red ones? lovely colours. 



sciencefiction said:


> Yes, in a shrimp and snail only tank my shrimp outcompete the snails eventually and I barely have snails in them though I feed the shrimp daily.  It will take months until you have a large enough cherry population though.
> If you've got predatory fish in with the shrimp, the shrimp will be unlikely to multiply enough to compete with snails but then in that case you just shouldn't overfeed the tank and clean it of dead leaves, etc..


Do the snails purely feed off the excess debris in the tank then? As long as i keep it clean they should be gone?


----------



## sciencefiction (22 May 2014)

Dominic said:


> Haha i dont mind them until they start eating my plants!  Yeah i like ramshorns, they dont seem to multiply as much as the ordinary pond snails. you seen the red ones? lovely colours.
> 
> 
> Do the snails purely feed off the excess debris in the tank then? As long as i keep it clean they should be gone?



Yes, that's what they feed on. If there's excess debris you got a snail explosion. If you clean the tank well and don't feed excessively, then eventually their population will diminish significantly. It's that simple. Also, although no critters eat poop, when fish are overfed parts of their poop is unprocessed and other critters like snails can feed on that too.
I personally like snails. I've never seen or experienced any of the ramshorns, pond snails or Malaysian trumpets eat healthy plants. Not the small versions of them. Big pond snails that are different species and big ramshorns different from the smaller red ones do eat plants, but the small versions we keep are predominantly detritus and algae eaters. They'll eat dead plants too.


----------

