Baby snails! Eek!

[PlatyLady]

This morning I'm doing my weekly cleaning. I had two buckets of old water that I was dumping when I noticed baby snails in them! I had bought a guppy months ago, and a snail got in the bag at the lfs. I put him in the tank and have seen him maybe 3 times in 3 months.

Now I have 4 babies that I know about. Who knows how many more are in the tank! I have zero experience with snails. What do I do with them? Am I in for an infestation???

 

[TankGirl]

The first thing I would try, not knowing anything about the tank and its inhabitants, is to sink a piece of Romain lettuce (rubber band it to a rock or something) and check back in the morning - hopefully there will be quite a few baby snails on it. You then remove the leaf and the snails with it. It might take a week of doing this. Conversely, there are snails that will not eat lettuce (like mine) and in that case you can get yourself some kind of loach, or just pick them out every time you see one. You can train your fish to eat the smushed ones (some are concerned about getting infection from smooshing snails, so you can use a Playtex glove to do it), as mine really love snail meat. I would try your best not to treat the tank with snail removing chemicals. Increase gravel vacs to reduce the available food for the little buggers, and that should help quite a bit. Somehow it seems that there is no such thing as having one snail! To answer your last question, YES

 

[ferret]

Snails, mmm.

For reference, here's some fish that love those little snails:

Clown Loaches
Goldfish
Gouramis

 

[Jazz]

oops,

 

[TankGirl]

My gourami won't eat snails for me, but I think Allivymar had one that cleaned out a tank with snails.

 

[PlatyLady]

Okay, so all my new snails (5) are in a little jug at the moment. Can't find the original one. I'm so not looking forward to an infestation. Now that they're out, what do I do with them? It's probably too cold outside to throw them in the garden (it's going to be almost freezing tonight).

I feel guilty squishing them up. I can't even deliberately step on ants in the summertime. What do I do with my surprise snails?

 

[Allivymar]

Know anyone with loaches or puffers PlatyLady? They'd prob LOVE to take the snails off your hands!

 

[Sati]

Ever since I got my Burmese Loach I haven't seen any more baby snails. Just my one big guy :]

 

[Allivymar]

Oh and yeah, I had a 8g hex tank where I was breeding snails for my loaches. I used it as a QT for some dwarf gouramis. When I moved the gouramis into their new home, I realised almost all my snails were gone! Turns out gouramis will eat snails; they seem to prefer the lil ones; the only ones left were the bigger guys.