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Army of Snails !

lil-lynx

lil-lynx

Member
Joined
23 Jan 2010
Messages
499
Location
Staines
Hello how do i get rid of snails ?.
When the lights are turned of a whole army of the dam things come out.
They are not casing much of a problem, well, in fact the only problem is they are faltering my riccia. But they are not the most attractive thing.

Any suggestions ?
 
Iv got two chain loach which are meant to be one of the best at clearing snails. I have never seen them once eat or even attack a snail tiny or large. :(
 
1.
cucumber

put a lump in at each end of the tank, turn lights off, come back in an hour and remove cucumber with al the critters on.. repeat this until problem solved...

2.
hand pick them out

any you see, remove or crush etc. combine this with cucumber and you have an effective combination.

3. Snails

get 1 (ONE) assasain snail otherwise they will breed, this will help to control the population slowly and keep them under control. however, once all snails are gone you still have to feed them, much like loaches. i wouldnt advice loaches as they take up valuable stocking room for a problem which can easily be overcome.

4. Feeding

how much are you feeding? snails need to eat something, so give your substrate a good vacuming and ensure your food is not getting to the substrate. feed fish little and often so they eat it before it sinks. for sinking pellets, feed lesser amounts and clear up any mess...
 
What Nick said :)
I had the issue a while back when I got a whole load of MTS, they are great for functionality, but because I have discus I tend to overfeed them during juvenile stage and at that point the MTS population exploded.

Luckily I only fed the juveniles for a few months and chucked in a handful of assassins. Now I have the opposite. Lots of Assassins (which I love) and no MTS :)

Ive got a few for swops if you are interested.
 
Would you sell any of your assassins ?
Matt
 
I will see what lil-lynx has to offer for em first as think she has the snail problem.

But yes I have spare snails, pm me how many you are after to stay on topic on this thread.
 
I had a massive snail problem in my 3ft and tried 3 assassin snails, cucumber and one or two other suggestions without really putting a dent in the problem. At one stage I estimate I was handpicking between 20 and 30 snails out every single evening, for weeks on end!

For assassin snails to make a difference I'd have been ok with about 20 or 30 put into the tank. And yes as suggested, of course these are going to breed. So the net addition is the most important. I don't know about chain loach, but zebra loach eat snails. And they eat them lots! I think what happens though is they mostly eat the small ones. So they probably eat the small assassins too. The only evidence of assassin breeding was a small one I found in my filter :)

So I think a combination of assassins and zebra loach does the trick. I still have snails in there, but they're under control. In hindsight if I'd bought more zebra loach and did this right from the start then I'd probably be doing much better now.

Best of luck destroying the horrible things!
 
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