these little piggyback snails

[fishtankfish]

i was thinking of planting my ten gallon tank but i have all these little snails in my tank. i want to get them out before i put in live plants. how should i go about this?

 

[Bearfan]

No real way to get them all effectively. A clown loach will take care of them, but they're too big for a 10g.

 

[TankGirl]

You can put in a piece of zuchinni or lettuce, rubber banding it to a rock or something, and hopefully in the AM the thing will be covered in snails, so you can just pick it and the snails out at the same time. Sometimes it takes several attempts to get anything accomplished. Otherwise, pick, pick, pick as much as you can.

 

[QTOFFER]

TankGirl's veggie trap idea works great in my tank. I use broccoli, which my albino ancistrus loves.

In addition, I've noticed that snails (especially the teeny tiny ones that hide in the substrate) sink alot slower than gravel. When I gravel vac, I churn up the gravel vigorously and the snails rise up in the vac tube. After I let the gravel fall out, I'm able to catch most of the snails in my cupped hand as they sink. I also go on snail search and smush missions at night. It's not 100%, but it sure keeps their population in check.

 

[TankGirl]

That's a good tip about catching them in the gravel vac - it is frustrating how they seem like they're going to go up the tube but don't quite make it, LOL. Maybe it is better they are in my tank than in my sink, come to think of it!

My ancistrus are not all that keen on the broccoli (tried it after BrianNY mentioned it) but it may be they would develop a taste for it if that was all I offered. It took them a while to really go to town on the zuchinni but now overnight the zuchinni is gone so it is no good as a snail trap.

 

[William]

I don't see anything wrong with snails.

They are easily controlled by careful feeding, take care of tank cleanup, take care of any algae that may try to grow, ect ect

In both my planted tanks I keep little " pest " snails, They don't touch the plants, and they happily keep the entire tank clean and healthy.

Pest snails are only pest-like when people overfeed and cause a population explosion that could number hundreds, or even thousands.

just feed carefully and you will have a conrolled, important block in your mini ecosystem


[/soapbox]

 

[Lance M.]

I totally agree with William. There is really no reason to get rid of those snails because they don't eat plants and are great scavengers. And like he said you can physically control there numbers by the amount of food you put in. IF they don't have any food they don't have the energy to reproduce. And they look cool.

Trapdoor snails are awesome (this type doesn't come with the plants you have to buy these snails). They don't eat plants. I like these better than the pond snails and MTS. Trapdoors are very cool with their color and stripes. They get a lot bigger than pond and MTS snails. And unlike those the trapdoor is a livebearer so they won't reproduce very fast.

 

[krap101]

my snails are as big as my fist now. once they got to 1/2 that size they started destroying my java fern and swords. i had to move them into a tank without any plants but i threw in some anacheris because im kinda trying to get rid of it because it never did well and once the thing branches off the older part like rotts. but their not eating it

 

[TankGirl]

I have a marvelous large ramshorn that I am very partial to. I would definitely be upset if anything happened to him - they are fun to watch!

 

[Menagerie]

fishtankfish, do you know what kind of snails they are?

 

[Lance M.]

Ya krap101 any apple snails, mystery snails, ramshorn snails, or pearl snails will devasate a planted tank when they get large. But pond snails and MTS that come with the plants won't harm them and won't get very big.

 

[William]

The Applesnail I have in my planted 10gal bottomfeeder tankdosn't disturb the plants at all.

 

[dud]

Didn't read the post title...had to edit.

Last weekend I went to one of the big natural spring, looked into the water and golly! It was half 'pond snails' and half sand/gravel. The gravel color was generally white so I could see the snails pretty well, and I mean that they were half of the substrate! But still the spring was full of plants and they were doing good. I'm not sure whether those particular snails didn't like those plants or they had other easier and yummier stuffs to eat around (like algae) but anyway the overall look told me that they wouldn't be so bad for plants. I don't know, for me the piggyback snails looked close to them.

 

[pkremer]

Another option besides clown loaches would be a yo-yo loach. They stay much smaller than the clown loaches and would do the same number on the snails...if you decide you really want to get rid of them.

Paul

 

[Lance M.]

As I said pond snails won't harm the plants....