I found this, is this a one timer thing or are they really that much to handle?
I have a 415 liter heavily planted community tank with an assortment of fish: angels, neons, a feather-fin squeaker catfish, white clouds, lemon tetras, blue rams and others. Three years ago I noticed a trumpet snail. A few months later I had dozens of them. Eventually I had thousands of them. Every time I cleaned the pump’s foam filter, I would wash out 300 to 400 tiny snails. And twice that many when I cleaned the canister filter. During the day they burrowed in the gravel, coming out at night and they would cover everything. It was difficult to keep new plants in the gravel because the snails moved it around so much, and when I dug a hole, I would dig up scores of them. They were constantly clogging the filters. The good thing is they cleaned up all of the dead plant debris, kept the rocks clean, aerated the gravel, cleaned the glass somewhat, cleaned the plants somewhat and didn’t harm the live plants. I think they also lowered the pH of my water by removing minerals for their shells. I bought two small clown loaches to try to control them. The clown loaches had a field day. They grew very fat and happy over the course of a year, while decimating the snail population. Unfortunately, the plant debris started to build up again, the pH rose from 6.5 to 7.8 and the rocks and gravel became discolored. Six weeks ago I traded in the two loaches in hopes of bringing back the snails. The pet store was happy to get them; they were the healthiest loaches they’d ever seen. Yesterday night I saw three small trumpet snails on the glass. After the population grows, I’m going to try to control them with some nighttime netting.