# loaches wont eat snails



## jd lover (Mar 11, 2011)

so i bought some yoyos and clown loaches for my 75g which is infested with snails and the loaches dont seem to be eating the snails. i have not feed the tank in 3 days and was wondering if my loaches are too small to eat snails. the loaches are only about 1.5" it seems theyshould be able to take care of the snails but theyre not.

any other suggestions as to what to get to take care of the snail problem? o and dont suggest assassin snails. i cant get them here =/


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## ndblaikie (Oct 12, 2011)

Add a leaf of lettuce and keep an eye on it as the snails will love it and you can remove a large quantity of them.

Best done at night so the fish dont get too excited and start eating it.

It also really depends on what snails they are. Do you know?

Different methods work for different snails.


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## fmueller (Jan 11, 2004)

It's not like a few young loaches can clear a tank of hundreds of snails within a few days. What people usually do is manually remove as many snails as possible, and then let the loaches take care of the rest. The loaches also have an easier time eating small snails than old ones with big and very hard shells. A good way to manually remove snails is to drop a large piece of cucumber or zucchini in the tank. The next morning it will be covered with snails, and you can discard the veggie with the snails.

You can mail order assassin snails eg via Aquabid.com.

In general, if you don't overfeed, you won't get a snail problem.


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## PfunMo (Jul 30, 2009)

That has been my experience with them as well. I got my latest snail crisis from a friend. He sent me over some fish along with a snail or two concealed in the water, fish or on the net. He was tearing down as part of a move and also a plan to clear the snails from his tank. He offered the large clown loach but I turned it down since he and his clown loach were being overrun by snails. His tank bottom with the large clown loach was no longer substrate of any type but just multiple layers of MTS climbing on and over each other. Really disgusting to watch!


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## jd lover (Mar 11, 2011)

dont know hoow the snail came to be but i dont over feed and i know i dont as no food is left when my hand leaves the tank (yes i handfeed). i dont expect the loaches to clear it in a few days but it appears to multiply faster than my loaches seems to eaat. and i inspect the tank and no snail shell or anything. these are very small snails. i would say about 2x the size of pfs sand. and i thought about the cucumber trick and i herd you have to boil the cucumber first to make it more appealing to the snails correct?

yes i can mail order them but the shipping rates will be too rediculous.


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## PfunMo (Jul 30, 2009)

I should make my answer a bit more clear. I said


> That has been my experience with them as well.


I did not mean what FMueller had said. We were posting at the same time. What I meant was that my experience with loachs was as you described. Useless! I found them of no value at all even for the tiny snails.

Maybe they simply liked my plants too much!


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## Woodworm (Jan 3, 2009)

jd lover said:


> i thought about the cucumber trick and i herd you have to boil the cucumber first to make it more appealing to the snails correct?


The boiling is to get it to sink. I have to do this when I feed veggies to my different plecos if I don't use a SS spike to sink it.


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## PfunMo (Jul 30, 2009)

I feed zucchinni to my bristlenose by rubber banding to small flat pieces of sandstone. We call them food bombs!


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## Woodworm (Jan 3, 2009)

PfunMo said:


> I feed zucchinni to my bristlenose by rubber banding to small flat pieces of sandstone. We call them food bombs!


I do this when I give them asparagus, green beans or similar things but for some reason never done it with any of the squash family. I guess I just got stuck in a rut since I started feeding them the squash first. :lol:


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## fmueller (Jan 11, 2004)

jd lover said:


> i dont over feed


Various varieties of apple snails do eat life plants, but they get big and are not easily confused with the types of common pest snails you find in fish tanks. The latter won't bother life plants, but eat the same food as your fish. As a general rule, your slowest fish will still be a lot faster than your fastest snail. Hence, if a fish wants the food, it will easily out-compete the snail. As a result, the snails can only eat what the fish leave behind. If you feed only as much as the fish will eat, there is nothing for the snails to eat and no chance for their population to explode.

I've made the mistake of overfeeding myself, and I have had this discussion time and time again with people on this forum. It isn't actually that easy to see if you are overfeeding, but if your tank is overrun by snails, it is a sure sign that you are. I would recommend to feed half of what you are feeding now, and see how you go.

Sometimes it is easier to reduce the feeding frequency than the amount per feeding. When my Frontosa were growing up, I used to feed them at least once per day. Now that they are adults, they leave food behind unless I feed only every other day. Sometimes I even skip two days, and they seem to do very well with this feeding regimen.

Best of luck!

PS: Regarding the clown loaches, you can actually condition them to eat snails by squashing some snails eg with a knife against the glass. The squashed snails are much easier to eat, and eventually the fish will find out where this tasty treat came from, and go for the life snails. The same works for many cichlids. For example in my 240G Tanganyika tank there are always snails in the sump, but I have never seen one in the main tank.


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## PfunMo (Jul 30, 2009)

So the basic idea is that these snails on my plants were just going for a walk while waiting for me to feed them? And the holes are just where they put their foot down too hard? It sures looks to me like they are eating my plants and leaving holes!


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## tim_s (Nov 27, 2011)

fmueller said:


> It's not like a few young loaches can clear a tank of hundreds of snails within a few days. What people usually do is manually remove as many snails as possible, and then let the loaches take care of the rest. The loaches also have an easier time eating small snails than old ones with big and very hard shells. A good way to manually remove snails is to drop a large piece of cucumber or zucchini in the tank. The next morning it will be covered with snails, and you can discard the veggie with the snails.


 :thumb:



fmueller said:


> In general, if you don't overfeed, you won't get a snail problem.


 :thumb:

I actually had a huge issue with MTS, I never know how bad it was until I started looking at the tank at night. - I reduced feedings and the problem gradually went away.


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## jd lover (Mar 11, 2011)

ok like i said i know its not overfeeding asi handfeedand by the time my hand leaves the tank all the food are gone if there even any left my cory cats will pick up the rest. i say this with confidence because when i notice the few snails at first i remove my main fishes leaving only cory cats in the tank and stop feeding. i went and got the 6 loaches later that day and now it has been almost a week and the snails have multiply and are in plain view from even across the room.

as i said i have not feed this tank in a week and yet im getting more snails now than i have beforeand the clowns dont seen to be eating them. (or atleast not any noticeable amount). i figure it might be the size. if that is the case i can get 3" clown loaches.

i plan on trying the cucumber trick tonight and see how that goes


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## fmueller (Jan 11, 2004)

PfunMo said:


> So the basic idea is that these snails on my plants were just going for a walk while waiting for me to feed them? And the holes are just where they put their foot down too hard? It sures looks to me like they are eating my plants and leaving holes!


I said snails don't eat life plants, which this leaf is not! If you think the leaf is dead because the snails ate it, you have your causal relationship reversed - they eat it because it was dead already!



jd lover said:


> i said i know its not overfeeding


Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt. ( Gaius Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico 3.18 )


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## jd lover (Mar 11, 2011)

i already point out why its not overfeeding. i stop feeding the tank and the snails multiplies and explodes in my tank while with the fish in and 3-4 feeding a day i would normally see roughly 10 snail per wcnot theyre all over.

*** had the snailsin the tank for roughly 1-1.5 month before i decide to take the fish out and add loaches


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## PfunMo (Jul 30, 2009)

The leaf is dead because I can't take a picture through six inches of water so I picked it. If I take a picture from far off to show the plants growing in my tank, you can't see the snails. If I take a picture close enough to show the snails and damage, you can't see the plant is alive and growing in my tank. 
Assorted live plants in my tank








This is the top of the small pot near the tank center. I don't think that little school of fry are up to eating plants, so I figure it is the snails. Do you still insist they are not eating live plants?


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## fmueller (Jan 11, 2004)

Folks, I donate my time to these forums to offer suggestions and to share experiences gained in many years in the hobby. There is no obligation to take my advice if you don't like what you hear. The snails PfunMo shows in the last photo look like Malaysian Trumpet Snails (MTS) to me. jd lover seems to have red ramshorn snails as far as I can tell from the little info we have about them. It is well known that these snails do not eat healthy life plants, but they might eat dead leaves or decaying plants. MTS are used by many people across the world in planted tanks with fragile plant species to no ill effect. If the snails eat the leaves of PfunMo's plants, and those are the same plants he previously dipped in hydrogen peroxide or bleach to get rid of snails, then I might just have a hunch why the leaves are dying. That said, there are many other reasons why plant leaves can die, and to explore them would go well beyond the scope of this thread.


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## limpert (Aug 28, 2007)

i've had luck with ridding snails by adding decent amounts of salt to the water.


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## jd lover (Mar 11, 2011)

fmueller said:


> Folks, I donate my time to these forums to offer suggestions and to share experiences gained in many years in the hobby. There is no obligation to take my advice if you don't like what you hear. The snails PfunMo shows in the last photo look like Malaysian Trumpet Snails (MTS) to me. jd lover seems to have red ramshorn snails as far as I can tell from the little info we have about them. It is well known that these snails do not eat healthy life plants, but they might eat dead leaves or decaying plants. MTS are used by many people across the world in planted tanks with fragile plant species to no ill effect. If the snails eat the leaves of PfunMo's plants, and those are the same plants he previously dipped in hydrogen peroxide or bleach to get rid of snails, then I might just have a hunch why the leaves are dying. That said, there are many other reasons why plant leaves can die, and to explore them would go well beyond the scope of this thread.


i understand and i appreciate your hel. but you keep insisting that im over feeding which i stated i had stop feeding for the past week since i added the loaches and the snails seems to have multiplied even more than when i had the fish in and feeding regularly.

at any rate i try the cucumber method and got no luck. i put it in at around 8 last night came to check on it and only 2 snails were on it. i was expecting more. is getting 2 at a time normal? i can clearlysee roughly 50-100.


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## tim_s (Nov 27, 2011)

PfunMo said:


> I feed zucchinni to my bristlenose by rubber banding to small flat pieces of sandstone. We call them food bombs!


Never thought of this.


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## fmueller (Jan 11, 2004)

jd lover said:


> at any rate i try the cucumber method and got no luck. i put it in at around 8 last night came to check on it and only 2 snails were on it. i was expecting more. is getting 2 at a time normal? i can clearlysee roughly 50-100.


No, that is not normal. The cucumber should be covered with snails. Those snails are obviously finding an abundance of food in your tank that they prefer over cucumber - which is food experience shows snails to like very much!

You need to find out what is the food source for the snails. More than 9 times out of 10 somebody asks this question on the net it is overfeeding, but you know your tank better than anybody else, including me. Do you have large amounts of decaying plant material in the tank? A big piece of driftwood that has started rotting? Any chance we could see some photos of the setup?


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## jd lover (Mar 11, 2011)

fmueller said:


> jd lover said:
> 
> 
> > at any rate i try the cucumber method and got no luck. i put it in at around 8 last night came to check on it and only 2 snails were on it. i was expecting more. is getting 2 at a time normal? i can clearlysee roughly 50-100.
> ...


it might be the driftwood since thats where i am seeing all of them. how do i know if its rotting or not? there is like one or 2 dead leaf but thats about all. i will try to get a tank pic tomorrow wheni get the time.

once again i truely appreciate the help as always.


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## fmueller (Jan 11, 2004)

What kind of driftwood is it? Did you buy it or find it in the woods? Any idea what type of tree it came from?

I am cheap, and all the wood I use comes from the woods, but after a few years it need to be swapped out. You can pull the wood from the tank and smell it. Obviously stuff pulled out of a tank always has a certain odor to it - to my wife it stinks, personally I'd call it mossy, and to me it's a nice natural kind of smell. However, when the wood as reached a stage where it stinks to me, it has to go 

Regarding the leaves, one or two dead leaves won't feed 100 snails for very long. We have to look for a very substantial food source like a large piece of driftwood in a considerable state of decay, where it smells bad and the outside is quite soft to the touch.


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## jd lover (Mar 11, 2011)

i bought it and it was malaysian driftwood. i when i smelled it it smells just like wood but i think this piece might be the problem as i see tons of snails on it and only 10 or so on the other pieces. guess ill just keep removing it from the tank and boil it when theres alot of snails on it


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## Pizzle (May 24, 2011)

My trumpet snails don't eat live plants. They only eat the leaves that are dead or dieing. Sometimes the dead or dieing leaf is still attached to the plant so it appears that the snails are eating live plants.


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## fmueller (Jan 11, 2004)

jd lover said:


> i when i smelled it it smells just like wood


In that case the piece of wood is not your problem. I recommend continuing your search for the food source the snails are using.



jd lover said:


> guess ill just keep removing it from the tank and boil it when theres alot of snails on it


Boiling wood will disinfect it, but it also accelerates the decay because it breaks down some of the cellulose that gives the wood its stability. In a nutshell, if decaying wood is your snails' food source, boiling the wood will make the situation worse. In that case you simply have to discard the wood, but since the wood smells fine, I very much doubt that's your problem.

On the risk to keep flogging a dead horse, have you considered halving the amount you feed just to see how that will affect things?


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## jd lover (Mar 11, 2011)

thats the thing after i remove the main fishes and stop feeding is when the snails seem to multilied. when the fish were in the tank i would occasionaly seem 2-5 when doing a water change now i see 100s on a pice of wood


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## fmueller (Jan 11, 2004)

What were the 'main fishes'?


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## Nodalizer (Nov 7, 2011)

Have you checked your filters by any chance ?


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

Snails proliferate with an abundant food source. No food equals no snails. 
Fish poop with a ton of undigested protein, etc is an abundant food source. No visible " food" is required to be in the tank.

Pfunmo's snails are plant eaters... But they are not MTS. *** had pfunmo's sort and they are a pain for planted tanks. Since they eat plants, fish food and fish poop isnt the issue with that kind.

Jdlover... Snails often "hide" with fish in the tank and start to cruise around happily and visibly once they are gone. They probably had plenty to eat in the substrate as well... You had all those snails all along. Remove the "predators" and source of food and out they come to roam. The wood can grow a nice edible biofilm... I am sure they are eating that. Yank out the wood daily and rinse it off with the hose outside if warm enough, brush them off if not. Snails will diminish over time. Once tank is devoid of food the zuchini trick will work. Cucumber isnt as attractive to ramshorn snails. A bit of shrimp gets more than cuke which makes me think of ramshorns as scavengers more than vegetarians. I hope that helps


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## jd lover (Mar 11, 2011)

the main fish were angels and for it didnt remove all the fish just the angels and dither. i was hopping once my loaches were starved theyd attack the snails. didnt work lol but ever since i put the angels back i havent seem much snails. if theyre hiding its fine with me as long as im not swarm with them all over my wood/glass to the point where i cant see.

i also read that if the snails dont eat plants they can actually be pretty useful. is that true?


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

I like snails, and I do consider them handy as they do eat any left over junk that will rot. I do find that they can cause nitrate levels to spike if they grow in numbers so I "harvest" them with a trap from time to time. If I don't want to sink a trap into the tank, I just take a net, get up one morning before the sun comes up and scrape the walls of the tank. They all come way up onto the glass while it's dark. 
:thumb:


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## jd lover (Mar 11, 2011)

really? i get up at 5 and i normally turn off my moon light then and i hardly see any the only time i see snails are on my wood


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

Any chance of a photo of the snails? To really defeat them we need to know the type


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## jd lover (Mar 11, 2011)

wrong thread lol ill post one up in a bit


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## jd lover (Mar 11, 2011)

bit fuzzy but its the best i can do


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## whiskeyriver (Nov 29, 2011)

Ah, those don't look like MTS.


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## Woodworm (Jan 3, 2009)

from what I can see they are ramshorn


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## jd lover (Mar 11, 2011)

yea i have mainly these and once in awhile ill see what looks like either what pfunmo has or blk mts


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