# SNAILS.....



## GRAMOS (Mar 6, 2007)

HI I HAVE 3 BIGTANKS AND THEY ARE ALL INFESTED BY SNAILS..... I REALLY HATE THE SNAILS MAKES MY GRAVEL LOOK LIKE **** AND MY GLASS IS COVERED IN SNAILS WHEN I TURN THE LIGHTS ON .... HOW CAN I GET RID OF THEM???????????? PLEASE HELP...


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## Razzo (Oct 17, 2007)

GRAMOS said:


> HI I HAVE 3 BIGTANKS AND THEY ARE ALL INFESTED BY SNAILS..... I REALLY HATE THE SNAILS MAKES MY GRAVEL LOOK LIKE #%$& AND MY GLASS IS COVERED IN SNAILS WHEN I TURN THE LIGHTS ON .... HOW CAN I GET RID OF THEM???????????? PLEASE HELP...


Transfer the fish to a hospital tank.
Tear down the tank.
Clean the substrate & all decorations and boil in water.
Clean the empty tank with ammonia or vinegar.

Perhaps somebody else may have a less extreme method :wink:

In the future, if you want snails, get Zebra Nerite snails as they do not reproduce in captivity

Best wishes,
Russ


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## prov356 (Sep 20, 2006)

You might try direct harvesting. Takes a while, but can be effective. Attach a piece of lettuce to a rock. In the morning it'll be covered in snails. Repeat nightly. Also cut down on feeding a bit, and vacuum out and even remove gravel as it harbors what the snails eat. You might also try limiting the light duration, so they're not getting algae to feed on.


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## xWingman48 (Apr 8, 2008)

I've had similar problems, although I never felt the need to shout about it.  (Turn your caps lock off).

I'm assuming you have Malaysian Trumpet Snails, right?









The best way to get rid of them permanently is to invest in some clown loaches or yoyo loaches.

To cut down on the snails while you're waiting for the loaches to get a good hold, here's what I've done:

- Get 3-4 empty spice jars (The ones with the holes that are big enough for the snails to fit through)
- Put a bit of veggies in them (I used cucumber strips)
- Every evening, place them in your tank half buried in the sand / gravel with the opening pointed up.
- Every morning, pull them out and toss the couple hundred snails that you've caught.

I did this for a couple of weeks in my 125, tossing out thousands of snails in total, and got them to the point where my 6 loaches could take over and keep the numbers down.

I guess you could get to the point where you got rid of all of them this way, but it only takes one to re-start the cycle, so you may need some help from nature (clowns / yoyos)


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## xWingman48 (Apr 8, 2008)

prov356 said:


> You might try direct harvesting. Takes a while, but can be effective. Attach a piece of lettuce to a rock. In the morning it'll be covered in snails. Repeat nightly. Also cut down on feeding a bit, and vacuum out and even remove gravel as it harbors what the snails eat. You might also try limiting the light duration, so they're not getting algae to feed on.


Very similar approach to the spice jars, but this didn't work for me because my bristlenose & mbuna would tear the lettuce up. I needed the jars to keep my fish from the veggies.


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## Razzo (Oct 17, 2007)

Harvest and preditors  I like it.

I knew there had to be a better solution than mine (Nuking the tank).


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## Airgekko (May 26, 2004)

Assasin snails also work well. I had a heavily infested 20 gallon tank - 5 Assasin snails and 45 days later I'm almost snail free.


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## 24Tropheus (Jun 21, 2006)

Synodontis and Julies or tetracephalus would be my predator of choice (My water is too hard and alkali for clowns to do well (yep I have tried em). Kind of depends on your stocking and water what fish to try. (But like most predators they can only take ones near the surface and reduce rather than eradicate the prob). Nice idea with those traps. :thumb: Other prob with the preditors is you end up with loads of half crushed empty ugly snail shells. 

All the best James


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## dielikemoviestars (Oct 23, 2007)

Clown loaches looooove snails, too. Not African, but they usually work with AC's.


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## GRAMOS (Mar 6, 2007)

thankyou everyone for your help .. i'm going to try alot of the suggestions.... i do have assasin snails but, the other snails reproduce way to fast for the assasins to even make a dent lol


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## bullit (Apr 9, 2010)

just a quickie.  Are snails good with the algae? i have a 10 gallon shelly tank that has no algae eater so would snails be ok? cheers


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

If you have enough waste to have excess algae, you have too much waste to keep a snail population under control, LOL.

The MTS are different than control for pond snails. I think just really underfeed and deep vacuum gravel obsessively. Or...

The one time I had a severe infestation of MTS (knock on wood) I removed-discarded substrate and replaced with 3" of PFS. Any survivors underneath my egg crate never made it to the top of the new PFS. Poof!

I used the lettuce for pond snails and ramshorns. And treating glass/decor with hydrogen peroxide every time I changed the water helped a lot too.

I swear the MTS arrive as larvae in the bodily fluids of fish ordered online. I always get MTS a month after I get new fish and then once I get rid of them they never come back. Until the next order, LOL.


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## BioG (Oct 12, 2008)

If the assassins aren't getting it done it's possible your light schedule and feeding are the culprit. Try cutting the food regiment and trim the lights to 8 hours a day for a month. The assassins will catch up assuming you have enough of them. Given time the assassins will produce another of their own at 1 per month until they have cleaned the mess.


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## Tshethar (Jul 20, 2009)

Thought I'd share what worked for me with snails--they can definitely be a problem to eliminate, and to keep out of places where you don't want them.

The short version: I had excellent results using Cupramine, and I would use it again if necessary. Just make sure you don't have any inverts in the tank you want to keep (e.g., assassin snails), and be prepared to keep harvesting live or newly dead snails so as not to overtax your biological filtration and pollute your tank during treatment.

Here is an email I sent and the response I received from Seachem when I queried them about using their product for this purpose:

> "Hi! I have a 120 gallon freshwater Tanganyikan Cichlid aquarium (plus 
>about 20 gallons of water in a sump), which currently suffers from a 
>long-term pond snail problem. Because of overflow boxes, 
>difficult-to-access wet/dry media and so on, it has been impossible to 
>eradicate the snails without resorting to a chemical approach, which 
>seems necessary as they have been creating problems with my pump. (I do 
>intend, once again, to manually remove as many as possible before doing 
>anything else.) My question is whether Cupramine could be used safely 
>to eliminate them, and whether you would recommend a different dosage 
>protocol with this aim in mind. Current tank inhabitants include 
>Cyprichromis Leptosoma, Altolamprologus Calvus, and Tanganicodus 
>Irsacae, and some Java Fern. Thanks for your thoughts!
> 
> Best,
> Bill"

Hello Bill,
Thanks for the email. Copper treatment is known to be an effective method for eradicating snails. Because of the copper complex we use in Cupramine, it allows for it to be effective, yet less harsh on the fish. Be sure to remove chemical filtration (especially carbon) during the treatment and since you are trying to eradicate snails, you can very gradually increase the copper level until you see the snails begin to die off. Do not exceed 0.25mg/L concentration in freshwater. The Java Moss may not tolerate the copper as well, but it is worth a try. Please let us know if we can assist you further.
Tech Support 10201

FWIW, my plants were fine and my fish showed no unusual behavior. I did this months ago and don't recall exactly, but I think the recommendation added up to a half-dose concentration which I maintained for about two weeks. After the initial dose I didn't add much at all; pretty much waited to make sure that once the die-off began that there weren't any stowaways, and that I was removing whatever corpses I could find. Then I did a few big water changes and added a poly filter--and, to my delight, end of snail problem, once and for all.

As I understand it, people hesitate to use copper because 1) some forms of it were reputedly difficult to get out of the tank once introduced, and would be toxic to inverts and maybe harmful to delicate fish (?); and 2) the test kits are a bit unreliable, so it can be hard to know how much you're dealing with at any given time. Others more experienced than I can talk about its use with fish, and whether it would ever be recommended for parasites--(maybe not given the alternatives)--but my results couldn't have been better for the snails.


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## Manoah Marton (Feb 17, 2009)

Not that you need another opinion, but I would probably steer away from a medication for this reason.
That once the 'million of snails' are dead, your gonna have the biggest ammonia spike on the planet. All those little bodies will decay, and rot, your tank will stink (trust me, I know) and all your fish will probably get very sick. 
The loaches are good, but the problem there is that clowns get gigantic. So if you want loaches, get yoyo's or kuli's (my favorite). Since you have assasin snails already (and the loaches would kill those) I would do this...
1. Do the physical snail catching methods from other posts to get the population down. I would add that during water changes, try to get as much junk out of your tank, and keep your water conditions up as much as possible.
2. Give the assasins a chance. If they seem to be able to keep up with the load, great. Your done.
3. If not, the only thing left is, like Razzo said, nuke the tank :lol: . Everything goes in boiling water, fish get salt baths, filter media is totally replaced, etc etc etc
Best of luck with this...I know snails are no fun,

Manoah Marton


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