Well I KILLED my snails

Skyetone · Post by **Skyetone** » 21 Dec 2003, 18:59

I finally had it. My 280 was a breeding ground for the SOB's. I was going to bait them for a while with zuccinni, but I have heard that I could be there a LONG time. I did it a few times and got dozens of snails that way though. Hopefully this will stay in the archives so search can be used to help others.

I had at least 2-10 snails an inch in the gravel and probably 2-5 per inch of glass. I had LARGE south american shovelnose catfish that thought the small loaches I put in (hoping) were a snack. I have no idea what snail this kind was but it looked like a small traditional snail with extremely red bodies. They didn't seem to get much bigger than the gravel, but I don't know if that is concitered full grown.

Well I had enough. I came home and did some experiments. Got a few dozen in a bucket by using my net and scraping the glass, got HOT water out of my tap.I don't know temp but it was hotter than any tank I have

Well that didn't seem to make them care right away. I got some boiling water. That worked, but kinda unrealistic for the size of stuff I had to deal with. So I got a small bowl and put in about a tablespoon worth of aquarium salt. I tasted it and it was potent enough that I would basically gargle with it if I was sick. Hopefully thats a referance most can deal with on potency. Drop a few snails in there and within a few seconds they would roll over and bubble up. Within a few seconds more I would see a small trail of blood come out of them. Well cruel but obviosly affective, salt became my way to finish this problem.

I broke out the spare large tanks and large plastic bins to store my fich in and started syphoning water from the middle of the tank water. Hopefully no snails would come with

and for the most part I was sucsessfull. I pulled the fish out (always fun) and got a medium sized plastic rubbermaid container that would be aprox 30 gallons. Big enough for me to submerge my largest lava rocks. I experimented and ended up putting three large boxes of aquarium salt into this container with warm water. I then would pull the large rocks out and submerge them. Well my idea was working, within a few seconds they would fall right off the rock. Some I would see bleed, but all fell off. I would let each peice soak for a few muinits while I was still draining and dealing with other fish. I would then pull the rocks out and put them in a rubbermaid container for visual inspection. The 5-10 per inch of varios ages were ALL off my rock

So I started ding the conveyer and dummped in EVERYTHING in the tank. All the towers, the overthe top filters and housing,the canesters,Powerheads, EVERYTHING.I kept a small bowl by the side so I could keep pulling water off the salt bucket and dropping a few snails in. They bled

So I figure it's potent enough

I then dug out all the gravel drained off as mush water as possible and would dump it in the salt water. Let it soak for up to 5 munits as I keep dumping in strainer load after strainer load. Then I would pull the gravel out and bucket it up to the bathtub for rinsing. I pulled out all gravel and undergravel filters and soaked it in salt water. Scrubbed it all and rinsed it. I then rinsed the bottom of the tank with hot water a few times just to get the leftover waste out.Then I put in the salt water to the bottom of the tank, and made sure that EVERY inch of glass was clean of snails. Then I rinsed out the salt water and started putting it all back in. I pulled the gravel and snail shells out of the bathtub and put them back in the tank. I seen a LOT of snails in the bathtub, none of witch were moving. Well it's been a day and a half. the tank is much cleaner, and so far not spiking due to the dead snail bodies biodegrading.I hope that I will have enough water (80 % of the tank) from before the attack to keep my biological levels going strong. I'll see If I can update.

I think this would be a way easy option for say a 30 gallon. But I was 3hours down and 3 hours up to tear my 280 apart. so plan accordingly

Post by **Coryman** » 21 Dec 2003, 20:04

Skyetone,

Not wantng to put a dampener on your snail battle but the breif hot water salt bath will not have eliminated any snail eggs. It is the eggs that are the biggest problem they are almost impossible to eliminate and it only takes a small amount to set the plague of again. In ten days I would be inclined to treat the tank with a commercial aquarium snail destroyer, gove it a day to take effect and then do a major watewr change.

Ian

Skyetone · Post by **Skyetone** » 21 Dec 2003, 23:28

I was wondering about that.... Do most snails eggs live in a mucasy glob of goo? I've seen these eggs in some of my other tanks. I don't know if those are the traditional snail that has a golden shell and body, my spiral looking snails or something else. It seems as though I have only had the problem with these particular snails in this particular tank. I have never seen any eggs though. I do know they are there though. I have heard that the copper snail killers will harm scaless fish. Well thats catfish and my eels..... so WTF do I do to ILLIMINATE this problem without killing my fish? I have the upper hand in this battle... the time to finish this is now. I have been pulling out bodies of snails that float on the top of the water today and last night. I have found three live ones on the glass. I quickly pulled them out and trashed em. I have zucchini in there now for my pleco's and any leftovers.

If you feel as though I will not win this battle with the stratagy I just came up with (cuz the LPS around here don't help) PLEASE inlighten me with some experienced knowledge of what to do.

Post by **Coryman** » 21 Dec 2003, 23:57

The only thing I can sugest would be to check everything for these little clumps of jelly, especialy plants, the corners and all joints of the tank. I know you have stripped the tank down already but anything that can easily be removed should be and checked for the tell tail jelly. Plants can be isolated in a bucket with snail treatment in it, then the snails will be erradicated when they hatch out.

They are a pain in the Ass.

Ian

magnum4 · Post by **magnum4** » 21 Dec 2003, 23:59

First wait and see your method may have worked. At the moment i give odds of 50/50, if you have never seen eggs then it could be a livebareing species.

Another possible method: 50% of the water out catfish and filters out, massive dose of snail killer for a few hours the a complete rinse and water change.

Graeme · Post by **Graeme** » 22 Dec 2003, 02:42

Naw!! They will live on!

Unless you Ahumm! Clean it proper!

G.

Post by **Dinyar** » 22 Dec 2003, 04:26

We have fought these battles for years. YMMV, but we did not have much success fighting snail infestations through frontal assaults. It comes down to the fact that you can almost never eliminate the last snail and/or the last egg in the last tank, and the population will spring back quickly. But by using snail-eating fish, we have wiped out snails in some of our tanks and brought the population in others down to the point where the snails are no longer a nuisance.

Dinyar

stepchild · Post by **stepchild** » 22 Dec 2003, 08:40

I wish you the best of luck. I tried to bleach them out. Copper seemed to work but I was looking in the tank today and they're back, gone for a year but they are back. Will be setting up new tank in a couple of weeks.
Bill

Skyetone · Post by **Skyetone** » 23 Dec 2003, 00:31

damn people raining on my parade... Maybee if I BELEVE they are gone, they will be

So is it true that it would be harmfull to put copper in the water? What does it do?

ClayT101 · Post by **ClayT101** » 23 Dec 2003, 21:26

This is how I rid my 30 gallon aquarium of snails:

First I put the fish into buckets. I then emptied the aquarium. I took the gravel out and baked it in an oven until it was dry. I used a large cookie tray for this and did several thin layers of gravel. I wiped down the aquarium and made sure it was dry. The live plants were trickier. For the plants with large leaves, I wiped them off, looking for egg sacks. For all plants, both small and large leaves, I put in a bucket with an extremely high concentration of snail poison, much higher than the normal dosage. I left them in there for a day or two. The plants were ruffed up a bit, but managed to survive.

For the filter, I wiped it down and waited until it was dry. This is where I made my one mistake. I failed to change the filter bag. There were baby snails inside the bag that I was unaware of. Needless to say they repopulated the aquarium.

I did this procedure a second time, this time changeing the filter bag and it worked perfectly, no more snails at all. Whenever I got new plants, I would quarintine them in snail poison. No snails entered that aquarium again.

Now I actually like snails, at least Malaysian Trumpet Snails. They only come out at night, and stir up the gravel during the day. I actually went to an LFS and asked for some...they thought I was crazy for actually wanting them in my aquarium.

Skyetone · Post by **Skyetone** » 23 Dec 2003, 23:56

I have no live plants, and did toss the filer bags. I seen one more small live one this morning. Need to go get him tonight

None on my zuchini, the plecos are thankfull

metallhd · Post by **metallhd** » 24 Dec 2003, 05:08

I bought some plants recently and got two stowaways, one in each tank. In the big tank we have msytery snails, well under control as they seem to breed slowly - I just squishes 'em when I sees 'em

In the little tank I had a 'snail bloom' of pesky ramshorns that I have managed to remedy thus far very successfully with no poison or chemicals. It's not perfect but it has brought a crisis to easily manageable proportions. I just took a little bit of a bottle and stuffed it with lettuce. The otos and platy youngsters seem to enjoy it and the snails flock to it. Three days ago I had about 200 snails, I would guess. Now I have maybe 30. I just stuff the bottle at night and yoink it out in the morning, very low maintenance and no worry of creating a toxic wasteland. . .

Merry Christmas all! Happy New Year!!

tiffnseve · Post by **tiffnseve** » 24 Dec 2003, 17:47

I had a couple hundred little snails in a one gallon tank. Yes, a one gallon tank( I use it for pregnant guppies) Anyways I sat by it with a book one day and played squish. I just read my book and crushed away at all the snails that came up by the top of the water. Then I moved in some ghost shrimp to go after the eggs. That worked all right. Now the ghost shrimp are breeeding and my snail levels are down. I might have to play "squish" again soon though. I ddn't try the snail eating fish route. my local LFS didn't really know what to do. My dwarf frogs seem to like snail eggs though too.

Sid Guppy · Post by **Sid Guppy** » 29 Dec 2003, 17:43

Good thing you have a plague of egglaying easily crushable snails.

The Burrowers are REALLY getting out of hand here, in the big Tanganyika showtank.....

like hundreds and hundreds on the window, rocks, plants and sand; and they're both very hard-t-crush and livebearing too.....

more and more, I'm leaning towards getting a Tang-puffer: Tetraodon mbu. unfortunately those get big.....

If any of you has any success on eliminating the plague of any snail in a tank with live plants and wildcaught fish, let me know!
I'm getting a bit desperate over here

JohnnyOscar · Post by **JohnnyOscar** » 29 Dec 2003, 18:11

Other than puffers, are there any snail-eating (or snail egg-eating) fish that might help to control those pesky little red snails skyetone described?

Post by **Dinyar** » 29 Dec 2003, 19:43

Yeah, lots. Just speaking of the ones I have in my tanks, has cleaned out all the snails from my Lake Tanganyika tank, may (or may not) have something to do with keeping them down in my South American tank and Botia striata has performed yeoman's service in one of my Asian tanks.

One of my favorite snail eaters is Carinotetraodon travancoricus (a puffer, but a tiny one the size of a pea). A very cool fish.

Dinyar

Skyetone · Post by **Skyetone** » 30 Dec 2003, 01:24

I had a flashbask today... I remembered that my 10 inch long raid tails would eat the larger snails I could find and buy to help clean the tank. But they aren't around anymore so I don't know if they would have solved my problem or not. I also think that land crabs eat the larger snails also, I have many carcuses in there tank. But they don't seem super efficent at the smaller snails, but i haven't been watching very close lately either.

I need to clean about 3dozen shells off the surfase of the water in my 280. No live to be seen. I saw ONE about a week ago, Was gonna kill it in the morning and forgot, now I don't see it at all.
I think salt is the answer......

Dale90g · Post by **Dale90g** » 30 Dec 2003, 23:30

I have Syno. multipunctatus, they cleaned out the snails in 2 of my tanks, and I plan on trying them in my 90 gallon. I don't know if you can use them, as your tanks mates are larger types, and the synos I had that worked, were under 3 inches at the time. Unless you have the larger fish housed in another tank and can give the synos a chance to work.

Skyetone · Post by **Skyetone** » 31 Dec 2003, 01:26

thats the armored catfish right? To tired to look em up

I have two large ones. The raphaels, Black with white horizontal stripes, I heard about them being snail eaters a little late. I thought about transfering them from my 75 to the big one. But opted to do the salt. I don't seem to have a problem in the 75 gallon with snails

hmmmmm

metallhd · Post by **metallhd** » 31 Dec 2003, 02:32

loaches work well for snails, all sorts (of both) - check out loaches.com for specifics, but hey Skyetone, before you use salt why not try lettuce?

Happy New Year All!

Skyetone · Post by **Skyetone** » 31 Dec 2003, 02:47

I did zuchini but it seemed too slow. I had a million snails, but if I started early it would of worked

ClayT101 · Post by **ClayT101** » 31 Dec 2003, 16:26

Clown loaches are great for keeping snails under control.

Sid Guppy · Post by **Sid Guppy** » 04 Jan 2004, 15:33

Synodontis polli has cleaned out all the snails from my Lake Tanganyika tank

My S polli's eat all kind of snails too, unfortunately they do NOT eat the Burrowing Snail (melanoides tuberculata).
But Ramshorns don't last long in the polli tank, neither do pondsnails or clockspring snails!

ikan · Post by **ikan** » 06 Jan 2004, 15:05

I drained my tank completely a couple of months ago and put the plants and driftwood in bleach solution. Things was going well until I found 4 snails tonight. Perhaps I should have drained the tank and left it dry for sometimes instead of only 2 days.
Before I did the drastic action I put some clown loaches and it did a good job but I wanted to eradicate the snails compeletely.

Dude123 · Post by **Dude123** » 06 Jan 2004, 17:48

some loaches, such as clowns, will eat snails but get big. Ive heard of other fish eating them as well but im not sure which ones.

madpiano · Post by **madpiano** » 13 Jan 2004, 01:08

Clown Loaches will eat snails, Kuhli Loaches tend to eat them as well. Puffers will eat snails.

But you said you tried Loaches before and they got eaten. So they are not a good idea. Puffers are poisonous as well, so if your fish eat them, they die.

Now, I don't really see what your problem is. I know the small Ramshorns can get to big numbers, but never for long. If you experience an explosion, you have too much algae/food around. Drop the amount you feed for a while (about a month) and see how that goes. They should slowly decline the numbers. I quite like them, as they are cleaning up nicely and don't feed on plants (aren't very good algae eaters either though

). Sometimes adding other snails helps. I have some football shaped ones and they can outcompete the little buggers and due to their size are much easier to collect. They are good algae eaters without damaging plants as well.

I now addded a Bristlenose and some Cories. That will soon get my snail numbers down, as there wont be any food left for them. I have also seen the Bristlenose eating snail eggs off the glass.

I still get the odd snail explosions, when, for some reason, they multiply like mad. It never lasts long, as they outcompete each other for food and then the numbers are back to normal. I just wish, they would eat more algae.....I have got some of that hairy stuff (short green hair) which no-one in the tank seems to like (I have Otos, Bristlenose, Amanoshrimp, Ramshorn snails, Tiger Snail, Cherry Barbs).

Skyetone · Post by **Skyetone** » 17 Jan 2004, 18:40

update....
Well I have recently found a few snails in my tank. Surprisingly they are almost full grown. They are as big around as my little finger. There has been about 4-8 of them. I have snagged about 4 of them, but I know there are a few more. I heard that the larger snails do not breed like the little snails... and truth to this? I also think in my smaller tank, guppies small tiger barbs and such, they eat the eggs that the snails lay. I have seen the eggs in the fake plants, but don't seem to have anywhere near the amount of snails in that tank.

I may be over feeding the big tank, the water keeps going green. Any ideas as of why? The filters are reasonably new and clean.

Crazie.Eddie · Post by **Crazie.Eddie** » 04 Feb 2004, 14:14

Yes, clown loaches can get big. In the wild, they can get up to 14", but at home aquariums, they normally get up to 6" or so. Pakistani loaches (YoYo loaches) also will eat the snails and only grow up to 3". Clown loaches are more colorful. Both loaches do well in groups of 3 or more. They also grow very slowly. The clown loaches will grow somewhat quickly, until it reaches about 3", then after, it will grow rather slow.

I had my fight with snails before. I used chemicals, which did more harm on the fish than the snails. I even would drop some chemicals on top of the snails that went above the water line, but all that did was just stun them and they would fall to the substrate. Eventually, they would get back up and do their snail thing (eat & multiply). I later cleaned took out all my fish and flushed everything with hot water and then soaked everything (filter, decor, etc.) with a bleach solution. I used a new filter cartridge & everything. I haven't seen them in months, so I figured I finally did it. Later on, I started seeing the baby ones again. That is when I decided to get the clown loaches. I first got 3 and later bought 2 more. Now I do not see ANY snails in the tank. In fact, I often go to my LFSs and ask to get some snails from them. This is free food and a nice treat for them. Once they know the snails are in the tank, they often go in a little frenzy and often grab the snails from each other.

Skyetone · Post by **Skyetone** » 05 Feb 2004, 01:09

I still see a couple snails now and again.There are two in there right now. I don't know weither to put my two large raphiaels in there, or just keep picking them out

But at least they are managable.... for now. I don't get whjere the new guys come from....

Crazie.Eddie · Post by **Crazie.Eddie** » 05 Feb 2004, 09:00

The snails eggs cling really well. I was keeping some snails for my plecos in a plastic breeding container to feed to my clown loaches once in awhile. When they were all gone, I tried to clean out the container with the snail eggs. I tried flushing it with hot water with the faucet turned on all the way and snails eggs wouldn't come off. I only had to scrape them off the container.

You can gently break the snail shells as they reach the glass. The fish will munch on them. All fish eat snails, it's just majority of them cannot eat through the shell.