2 pea puffers cleared my 40 gallon breeder of snails in a week.
Bill & Ted has some excellent adventures.
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
31 points (100.0% liked)
Aquariums and Fish Keeping
971 readers
2 users here now
A community for aquarists, both fresh and salt!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Any problem bladder snails cause assassin snails also cause.
You can get rid of them with a few weeks of diligent squashing with a long tweezer and careful feeding of your desired stock. Don't let any excess food hit the substrate. Morning is the best time to squash them, before your lights come on and they try to hide.
Loaches, hands down!! They are not expensive, have interesting/active personalities, and completely ate all my snails. They have decent patterns too. Could just get 2, assuming tank can handle more biomass.
What's in your tank? If possible I'd add loaches, it's a natural way to bring down the numbers and you're feeding a fish its natural diet.
In my experience the easiest way is to use a snail trap like the "Sera Snail Collect" which worked very well for me. Also just removing some every day by hand works but is slow progress.
Overfeeding the fish might be the cause for the population increase.
You don't really want to use a treatment as then you'll be left with dead and decaying snails in the tank.
What do you do with the snails you remove from the tank? I am not comfortable with the idea of just leaving them to die.
Honestly I just threw them in to the garden. You could remove them from the tank and then use a snail treatment, freeze them or use them as food for a loach or puffer.
I have snails in my shrimp tank and they can be controlled but also they can really take over so make sure you deal with them either way.
I have a similar problem with common snails. I've heard a $1-3 Assasin snail is the way to go. They only eat other snails, and won't breed in your tanks. (If alone)
Lol
I mean have you ever tried snail? It’s exquisite. I had a conch ceviche once that was to die for.
Honestly? I love them. They're cute and don't harm anything. Just don't overfeed the tank and they generally stay chil.
I would totally agree with you on this if they wouldn't clog my filter intake.
Assassin Snails. That's all you need.
Assassins are good but they leave empty shells everywhere and also breed.
They breed slowly and you pick up shells with the WC vac pretty easily. Not real downside. Could also add nerite snails, they do some fancy colours.
True the shells are easy to deal with but eventually there will be too many assassins with no predator.
Doubtful. Assassins breed so slow and they are big enough to siphon out anyway.
I love my snails.
How'd it go, OP?
I got a snail trap but I didn't have the heart to use it. I definitely was overfeeding so I adjusted the amount of food I'm giving to keep them under control instead.
One thing that I noticed though is that before them, I also had quite a bad algae problem on the glass and plants, now the aquarium is crystal clear, I believe they are keeping the algae in check too.
Having that said, I guess as long as don't overfeed, they are beneficial to the aquarium.
That's good! An Otto catfish can also help keep your glass and plants clean. I got an assassin snail as I had a similar problem (mine were eating the algae my fish need, and eating my plants. The snail is keeping my tank safe :)
I've also adjusted food, just so that the bad snails can't get any supplemental food. They seem to have an exponential growth rate otherwise...