Snails in the tank!

[masai_chadi]

In my fish tank I see more then a dozen tiny snails. I have not added any new gravel othern then regular water change. Where did these come from? How do I get rid of them?

 

[Purrbox]

Most likely they arrived as hitchhikers on live plants, or less commonly on the fish. Depending on the variety all it takes is one to populate the aquarium.

A common method for removal is placing a piece of lettuce in the aquarium overnight and removing with snails in the morning. After do this a few times you'll get most of them. You can also smush the ones on the walls and leave them as a snack for your fish.

I generally find that it's much better to control the population than it is to try to remove them. They're good a cleanup and are really quite facinating to watch. Just make sure you're not overfeeding and you should be able to keep their numbers at manageable levels.

Definately avoid copper treatments (like Had a Snail) to get rid of them. This will prevent you from keeping any type of invert in the tank in the future and the resulting ammonia spike can harm your fish.

 

[mr86mister]

They are most likely Pond Snails. Like purrbox said they might have came with something. Most likely your live plants. I used to crush them with my fingers, it was sort of gross at the beginning. But my fish freaken LOVED the snacks!!

 

[jrp1588]

clown loaches are also extremely good at eating snails. Don't know that I'd put one in a twenty gallon since they eventually get huge...takes forever, but they do.

 

[masai_chadi]

Thanks for the responses.

I have not introduced any plants for many months now.

It is gross squishing these things. But I will ask my son - I am sure he would love that!

 

[Jacko]

clown loaches are also extremely good at eating snails. Don't know that I'd put one in a twenty gallon since they eventually get huge...takes forever, but they do.

Clown Loaches are good snail eaters, but they do get massive, about 14 inches full grown and are schooling fish so really need a tank with lots of space. Even though they grow slow, they will outgrow a 20 gallon in a year to a year and a half. There are quite a few other species that can eat them as well, like the Dwarf Chain Loaches. I have personally seen Kuhli loaches, ghost shrimp and my A. molobrion (miniature species of horsefaced loach, hard to find anywhere) devour juvinile pondies and the A. molobrion will eat any snail that I put in the tank, unfortunately I WANT the ramshorns
Dwarf Pufferfish will also eat snails but they are often horrible fin nippers.

Like Purrbox said, it is better to attack the problem at it's source, snails tend to multiply when there is an abundance of food for them, so cutting back on feeding and doing more water changes/gravel vacuumings will help reduce the population.

I neat method that I have seen is taking a plastic bottle, cut it off about 3 inches from the top right about where it starts to taper up, then invert it and silicone it back together, you can shove some lettuce in afterwards or in the process. The cool thing about this is that the snails have a harder time getting out of it than they do the open lettuce leaf. Just be careful of your otos wanting to snack on the otos as well since I have seen this same method used with a larger plastic bottle to catch those buggery fish like Kuhli's that are so difficult to catch with a net.

Lol, I think that is all, really long post, sorry.