Thinking about assassin snails

[flitabout]

So as you may assume I have a snail infestation. They are reproducing faster than I can possible kill them. I have only had my tank going for a short time. I am guessing they came in as hitchhikers on my plants. I don't want to use chemicals in the tank especially since I have swordtail fry in there.
How effective are these for removing unwanted snails. This really sucks because I was really wanting nerite snails but I would still rather have the assassins than these ever mutiplying hitchhikers that are so ugly!!!!

 

[mtncrux]

I had a pond snail infestation in a 10 gallon tank. I added one assassin snail and my tank was 100% pond snail free after about 2 months.

I have read that if you over-feed, then the assassin snail will eat fish food off the bottom and not hunt pond snails as effectively.

 

[flitabout]

Good to know about the overfeeding especially since I am not sure how much the fry are actually eatting!

 

[thatropicalfishguy78]

not saying you should get one but interestingly enough, i had a small infestation of weird looking snails and every time I do a water change I have to crush them. but when I bought a bolivian ram, I unknowingly brought a miracle. After only 3 days, I never saw a single snail again.The evidence:no snails for 3 weeks and saw him picking at the acrylic. Even stranger than that, I never heard of bolivian rams eating snails before. dont worry he's been eating fine since I bought him.

 

[byork]

I have a brown knife she loves snails. I have assassins in my shrimp tank they barely keep the population of pond snails at bay. I have yoyo loaches in my largest planted tank and they eat any snail that hits the water. Other fish I have observed eating snails are kribensis and buffalo heads. Of course you probably don't want any of those in with your swords. Swords can handle pretty high levels of salt and nerites like salt too but pond snails don't seem to fare very well for me in hard salty water. If it is pond snails you are battling try getting as many as you can out when you clean the tank, reduce your feeding a lot, get your nerites and slowly add salt to the tank over the next couple of weeks. I have done this with swords in low lite planted tanks with high carbonate hardness. Plants like java moss, java fern, and Hygro sp. have done very well. Hygrophila difformis starts to grow to look very much like a cabbage. Weird..I thought. Good luck.

 

[molliwopp]

I actually miss my snail infestation, simple fix though, if you have food on the bottom of your tank then youll have snails. I feed my fish tiny amounts 2 or 3 times a day, this way floor food is minimized.