Loaches?

[danielt]

Hi, can anybody help me? I'm overrun with snails at the moment, and the assassin snails just aren't enough to help rid my tank of them, so is there a type of loach that would best suit my tank? I have a 160 litre tank (35 gallon I think) and its a planted, community. I understand that many loaches grow quite large and I'm not wanting many large fish, so any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[siva]

The loaches that are the best snail eaters won't work in a tank of that size. Loaches, in general, are social fish that need to be stocked in groups, five is usually perfect, and your tank just won't have room for 5 large loaches. Your best bet is probably going to be a trap. Google it and you'll see it's pretty easy to create one. If you're worried about bringing snails in in the future, you can dip new plants in peroxide to kill off any hitchhikers.

 

[LyndaB]

Quite often, the snails become overpopulated due to overfeeding. If your assassins can't keep up, then you might want to look into why you have so many pest snails. You can also help out your assassins by either laying a piece of lettuce in the tank overnight (the pests will congregate on it and you can remove it and them in the a.m.) or you can hand pick the pest snails out of the tank.

 

[absolutangel04]

I agree with both LyndaB and siva. I think the lettuce trick is a good option. You will have to do it more than once probably. I use that when I want to move snails from one tank to another and it works pretty well.

 

[HN1]

What is your feeding routine and what fish are in the tank?

There are a couple loaches that might work, but adding a fish to solve a problem usually ends badly.

 

[mfdrookie516]

As others have said, it's easy. Stop overfeeding, they'll stop overpopulating.

 

[danielt]

Well mfdrookie516, I don't over feed them. Once every three is what I've been told by many, so that's how often they get fed. Perhaps the fact that the tank is planted with live plants could actually be the reason or the boom in snail populations. Because of that actually, the lettuce trap won't work, they have enough food picking them out seems to be the best idea, and what is this peroxide stuff?

 

[absolutangel04]

Well mfdrookie516, I don't over feed them. Once every three is what I've been told by many, so that's how often they get fed. Perhaps the fact that the tank is planted with live plants could actually be the reason or the boom in snail populations. Because of that actually, the lettuce trap won't work, they have enough food picking them out seems to be the best idea, and what is this peroxide stuff?

Most pest snails don't eat live plants. I have pond snail, bladder snails, and ramshorn snails that don't touch my live plants.
Once every 3 what?

 

[danielt]

*3 days. And they're always on the plants. I think they're just really keen to breed really, with no predators, but one assassin snail. 3 days surely isn't over feeding, is it?

 

[HN1]

Probably not, but there's always the question of "how much?" every third day.

What fish are in the tank?

 

[danielt]

They get half a cube of frozen food or some flake, and the frozen foods change ( blood worm, brine shrimp or daphnia ) it all goes, the balloon mollies make sure of that. And other fish, a platy, neons and two red honey gouramies.