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How to remove snails?

Jaap

Member
Joined
30 Sep 2011
Messages
1,068
Location
Nicosia
Hello,

I seem to have alot of snails in my tank and each week I remove them they come back in even greater numbers. How can I get rid of them?

Thanks
 
If your tank is big enough for 4 Botia Striata, then get some. They're great fun to watch as they're very playful fish, and they sorted my snail issue in a matter of hours...
 
I have always just found manual removal they best way personally, If they are reproducing faster than you can remove them then you may be over feeding the tank. If you are feeding just the right amount it does not leave much left over to support a large amount of snails. You can just pieces of courgette into the tank right before lights out and in the morning there will usually be a large number of snails on it making removing a lot of snails quiet easy. I am always wary of chemicals, anything that can kill off a lot of snails is not going to be a nice thing to put into your tank even if it is supposedly fish safe and will more than likely kill any shrimp if you have any. Not to mention give you a large amount of dead organic mater in your water.
 
Kusuri wormer plus contains Flubendazol and killed all the Malaysian trumpet snails in my tank, even though I wanted to keep them (it does warn that it may kill them but I took a chance as I had to repeat the treatment), do not use with shrimps though.

I like Esha products and there was a time when I did want to clear my tank of snails but found the Gastropex ineffective, it also contains Copper so again not for shrimps.
 
How big is your tank? I would stay away from any liquid removal pesticides if possible as always as there not really necessary with snails, natural is always better. Put a load of Assassin snails in there and they will be gone in no time. Assassin snails are great, I love them. Awesome yellow and black colour.
 
Emyr said:
Put a load of Assassin snails in there and they will be gone in no time. Assassin snails are great, I love them. Awesome yellow and black colour.

They are awesome. I find they soon knock a dent in the larger pest snails but then the eggs hatch and you have a bunch on tiny ones on the glass. Suppose when they get a little larger the assassins will have a right ol picnic. :lol:
 
Genuine question,What do the Assassins do when all the snails are gone?
 
They can feed off left over food and waste in the tank, I once saw a photo of one that had got hold of a dying tetra and sucked it in, you can probably find it on the internet somewhere. Often they die off though as there is not enough for them to eat. You can buy snail food, but often people don't bother once the assassins have served their purpose, not good in many ways.
 
when i was having trouble with snails,i bought 6 small clown loaches,they grew well on the snails and once the snails were gone i put them in my 6x2x2 tank.
 
PAULOX3 said:
when i was having trouble with snails,i bought 6 small clown loaches,they grew well on the snails and once the snails were gone i put them in my 6x2x2 tank.

Nice to see someone with a proper sized tank for clown loaches :thumbup: How big are they and any pics?

My snail removal method was dwarf puffers.
 
We had a massive problem with trumpet snails in an MA store that I worked at... Had to do manual removal as there were shrimp in the system so we were wary of using the commercially available chemicals.
Clown Loach were great in our larger tanks. The rest had their sand manually strained through a new to remove the snails (which took forever). Any remaining were picked up by courgette or cucumber overnight.
We fed heavily in the shop so snails used to multiply on a pretty scary level tbh!
 
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