Is there a way to kill off my snails?

[MiamiCuse]

I have a community tank that is fully planted and it must be some of the plants I bought now I have snails all over, small dark brown ones. I pick about 20 of them each day off the glass but if I turn off the lights and turn it back on I will see hundreds of them.

How can I get rid of them short of emptying the tank and changing out all my gravel and plants?

Is there something I could use without harming the fish?

 

[new2betas]

What size tank do you have? There are several fish that eat snails, but are not usually recommended for smaller tanks. I also have problems from time to time with snails and have tried an alum soak on my plants and it works for a while, but they way they breed, they multiply pretty darned quick. A lot of members here say they will not get too bad if you don't overfeed, but I do not overfeed my tanks and still have the problem, so I wish I could help other than to tell you to "keep on squishing".

 

[Hellathafish]

If you know someone who wants the snails, here is an easy way to gather up your snails.....

Pick up some cucumber or lettuce. Before you go to bed place a leaf of lettuce in the tank OR A peeling strip of the cucumber w/ some of the meat attached. In the morning the snails will be gathered on the cuc or the lettuce. It may take a little bit of time or repeating these steps before you get them all, but it's safe (as far as I know) and humane.

That's what I've done when I had an over-abundance of snails and my Gourami LOVED the cucumber.

 

[JohnPaul]

Depending on the size of your tank, the safest way to achieve snail removal is to put in a loach of some sort. I put a single (relatively small) yo-yo loach in a 29 gallon planted community tank I had, and in about a month I went from having hundreds of snails everywhere to not having a single living snail. Those guys are just amazing snail eaters.

There are commercial chemicals you can buy to kill off snails, but the problem is most (all?) of them contain copper, which is toxic not only to snails but to all freshwater invertebrates. And once you get copper in your tank, you will basically never get it out. Which means in the future, you'll never be able to keep ghost shrimp, red cherry shrimp, freshwater crabs, or anything of that sort in your tank. So I highly recommend against medicating.

So it's either the loach route, or the physical removal route. If you put a piece of wilted lettuce in the tank for a few hours (or overnight) in the dark, then it should be covered with snails when you return, and you can just pick them all out of there. Do that every night, eventually you will get most of them.

 

[bs6749]

I agree with John Paul about the yo-yo loach suggestion. I had a problem with snails in a 29 gallon tank. I was throwing out about 100 or more a day. I bought 3 of the yo-yos and in less than a week I didn't have a single snail climbing on the glass or bottom. I'm sure there were snail eggs but as soon as they hatched they were eaten. I can't recommend yo-yos enough.

Also, if you never intend to keep inverts, copper is probably the quickest way of killing them. I think scaleless fish such as loaches are poisoned by it though.

 

[MiamiCuse]

Thanks, I will try the lettuce / cucumber combination first and see how that goes.