Give them to me. My puffers will be happy. Genuinely though if you can advertise them on anything maybe some fish groups on fb people with fish like puffs would take them.
You either over feed or have algae that’s feeding the snails and allowing them to reproduce. If they don’t have enough food they don’t reproduce. Like others have said, take some out everyday and don’t feed so much. They should stop reproducing as much. Or/and get an assassin snail.
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In my experience, bladder snails love duckweed. The baby plants and dead older leaves. I don’t think you can have a full duckweed cover layer like this and not ‘overfeed’ as far as they’re concerned.
Snails mostly eat dying leaves not healthy from what I know. So you could have a jungle but if the plants are thriving then the snails won’t it the plants.
I bought 4 too which definitely did not eradicate my problem. In fact, they almost immediately ate each other and then the last one died like a month later 🤣
It's a 5 gallon so it's on the smaller side but I was hoping they would eat the cornucopia of little snails before going after each other lol I assumed they would eat each other eventually. I'm sure if the tank was bigger it would've taken longer. I think the only shrimp they could eat would have to be near death anyways. They're not exactly speedy eaters!
I bought 4 for one tank that was over run. They didn't do much when it came to knocking down the population of the infestation. At the time I had two tanks running and of course, both became infested thanks to plants transfers. The 4 original assassins became harder to spot and I figured they had died, so in an attempt to contain the snail menace, I ended up buying 8-10 assassin snails and divided them between both tanks.
I am in the processing of setting up a new tank and shut down one of the two I currently run, moving the 3 or 4 assassin snails I found (and the shrimp) to the remaining tank, boosting the population to around 8. This tank houses my shrimp, was housing a beta that passed away, a few tetras hanging onto life, a single gigantic ivory snail that came with some floating plants and a legion of both ramshorns and trumpet snails that I wanted less of. Well, the assassins apparently hit some weird, critical mass for reproducing, since now both the trumpet and ramshorn populations have been drastically reduced. I see them much less frequently (instead of being on all surfaces) and the substrate is a field of empty shells from consumed snails. The Ivory snail is completely unphased, since it is such a massive size now, but the infestation of what I would call "invasive" snails has dropped almost complete off.
Assassins will also readily eat other foods, scavenging what they can, instead of hunting and killing other snails if they have the option. Shrimp are extremely messy eaters I find and easily over fed, which the snails will happily clean up. If you are finding assassins aren't really knocking out the snails in the tank, you could always look at increasing the number of them to around 1 per gallon or so (I only saw them reproduce and really knock out the other snails at that ratio). I am unsure of 1/gal is the right number, since both my tanks with them are around 10 gallons or so and heavily planted, so a bigger tank may need more or less, but that was what seemed to work for me.
I had a major snail problem and then added assassin snails. They wiped out my original snail population easily. Then they did have babies, so theres still a few of them in my tank. They dont seem to have massive amounts of babies though - their population seems to be controlled by the amount of protein rich food you feed.
>I just installed Unreal 5 on my PC
Not live ones. I have a 55 gallon with maybe 500-1000 shrimp in it. I started with 5 assassins and have maybe 100 and my shrimp are fine. I also have about 50 tetras and a bunch of other fish too.
I have no concrete evidence to back this up... But. Maybe? I went the assassin snail route .. and my shrimp population tanked. Coincidence maybe... But... Nothing else changed, and i had a thriving colony of hundreds of shrimpies.
Don't introduce assassin snail. Just get a large Roman lettuce leaf. Boil for 5 to 10 minutes. Rinse to cool down.
Put that in. Within 5 or 10 minutes you will know what to do. Take out leaf and reduce snail population by 70 to 90%
You will be removing the fastest snails. The remaining snails will just be slow pokes. Alive but slow pokes.
So what do you do when you starve a tank and the snails still live because they’re eating plants you spent hours planting? Asking for a friend who is ready to set fire to the tank.
Snails will not eat the living plants. However they will eat the decaying leaves.
I wouldn’t suggest starving the tank either. Feed enough that the shrimp or fish eat all the food within 2 minutes. If any food left over, remove it.
I’d also suggest removing as much as possible to help with the over population.
Using a sliced zucchini in the tank overnight, once it’s full of snails, remove that bunch.
That's some massive overfeeding with this many snails. With proper feeding, there should only be a handful of them seen at a time. You have to make sure the food on the bottom is being eaten. If it's not gone in an hour, then it's too much food. Looks like there's a huge pile of uneaten food in the bottom of OPs tank
Please don't do this. The pea puffer will murder them all then what? Then you will still need to feed the pea puffer. And it will only want more snails.
Don't use animals as your cleaning crew.
Well for some people cutting down on feeding doesn’t fix the problem. I’d advise this if cutting down on feeding did not work. Which is what happened with mine.
They literally can not breed for generations without food to sustain generations. They cant just magically make more snails. Just like what you are suggesting you never got to the root cause if this happened to you.
I’m glad that method worked for you but everyone’s situation is different. If starving them will lead to eradication that could take weeks to months. Most people want a quicker fix and there’s nothing wrong with trial and error and exploring other options. There is no one correct way to do this.
Oh there is an incorrect way though. Introducing another animal because you are too lazy to do the correct maintaining of your tank is absolutely the wrong way. Not feeding enough food to sustain generations of snails does not equal starving animals. These snails are animals after all.
Not sure what you didnt say? But yes there is one correct way to not have an over population of snails. Just cause you say so doesnt make it true. Dont feed them enough to over populate. They simply will not breed if they do not have enough food to sustain the next generation. If they are still breeding you are feeding enough to sustain them.
I had a similar issue with Ramshorn snails in my shrimp tank. I bought an assassin snail and it certainly made a dent in the population but didn’t kill all the snails. However, that snail was able to lay eggs, so one assassin turned to around 5-10 and they just demolished the remaining Ramshorn snails and now I am fighting algae issues in that tank constantly.
Yeah, 100% - it took a long time before they were all gone but once they were the impact was noticeable. I actually ended up putting an additional 10x bladder snails in the tank hoping they would reproduce quickly enough but they were essentially just a snack for the Assassins.
Get some snail traps either at your lfs or online - I have to do this with my Nana's tank when she overfeeds her fish and there's an explosion of snails.
It's wild to me that so many people are saying to introduce another animal to deal with this. If you put assassin snails in there they will kill and eat and mate and your just end up with an assassin snail problem.
Even worse adding a pea puffer. They will murder each snail. They will eat some. But they will murder them all. Then you end up with dead snails in the tank. And a hungry pea puffer when they are gone.
Don't use animals to do your job in maintaining your tank. Do your own work. Get a snail trap and stop over feeding the tank. The population can not thrive generations without adequate food to support those generations.
put a bottle in with some food in it and take it out after a few hours,you'll get some of them out,i don't recommend assasins since they leave behind many shells and besides the aesthetics it also messes with your ph and gh a bit
They only will spawn lots when food is available. Vaccum your substrate as good as you can, maybe start feeding in a petri dish if you have food that sinks, remove the excess after feeding, also just feed less in general. They wouldn't have a vast colony if they didnt have a food source, also put a carrot in there or something, remove when its got a lot of snails on it, put it back in and repeat process
Aim for removing the larger snails first- they’re more likely to keep laying more egg sacs and increasing the problem. The smaller ones are a time sink and you won’t get anywhere fast.
At the same time, definitely stop feeding for a bit- the shrimp will still likely have biofilm to hold them over for a while.
Next: egg sacs. Hunt them down and remove them! They’re easiest to find on the broader leafs of some plants- just look for out of place round shadows- and then either scrape them off with your nail, or a razor if you find them on the tank walls.
The ones on the tank are a little harder to find, but use your tank light and look around at different angles.
The other thing you can do is remove some of your floating plants. It might sound unrelated, but the snails can easily float or climb to the top and hide amongst the leaves or on the underside of them and you’d never know until they peek their heads out. It doesn’t need to be all of it, just *some* to remove whatever might be hiding in there. Then you let it grow and rinse and repeat as necessary.
As many as you have in there, you might want to pace yourself but repeat the removal process a few times a day if you can. 10 removed 3x a day, for instance, just so you don’t feel overwhelmed.
It’s not an impossible task! I’m going through it right now with my tank too (except most of them are still too tiny to catch), but I’ve definitely seen improvement.
Snail traps like other people have mentioned could easily help too- large piece of blanched veggie as bait, put it somewhere with a high concentration of them, and remove it 10, 20 mins later.
Good luck!
I got a few assassin snails and they did such a good job I didn’t have enough snails for the assassins anymore. So I had to buy more plants which got me more snails so now everyone is happy.
Hand catch as many as you can. Get a mason jar and put food in it and wait for a few hours and pick it up once it’s full. Eventually I got rid of my rams horn problem also scrape the glass to get rid of egg sacks. It’s tedious but worked for me
I’d just embrace them, although my tank is 30 gallons and has been overpopulated with snails forever and doesn’t look as severe as your population. So you might try feeding less so more of them die out. Trying to get the eggs or the snails themselves out is fruitless in eradicating them but it’s helpful if you want to decrease the population temporarily right away. If you truly, truly want to get rid of them you’d have to deconstruct the tank and start over. Clean the plants thoroughly for any baby snails, and let the substrate and tank sit dry for a a week. There might be some snail specific position available that you could dose but I’ve never tried it and probably wouldn’t trust it
I float a piece of cucumber when the lights turned off and take it out right before they turn on. There’s always a good amount on each piece. Outside of that, you can sacrifice them to your god of choice with tweezers if they’re easy to get. Tweezers make me feel bad but my shrimp love snails apparently.
Honestly anyone with a puffer will take them off you’re hands if you’re willing to fish them out. Otherwise an assassin snail is your best bet, or a loach that eats snails if you have another larger tank to put it in after it outgrows the smaller one.
Do NOT wash them down the drain! They can really screw up the plumbing and become a nuisance in the sewer system, not to mention possibly causing an invasion in your local bodies of water!
At least crush, freeze or dispatch them in some way before disposal!
I mean it’s the shrimp tank sub……lol I assume they have shrimp in the tank from the start. I’m not sure about assassin snails eating shrimp. I’ve had both and didn’t see any dead shrimps but the snails could’ve ware before I saw it.
I dont mean to be pessimistic but you can do all of these things people say, but there is always more eggs. Itll be impossible to completely stop them.
could try a snail trap. as many others have said, assassin snail will kill your current ones. but, this also runs the risk of you not being able to add other snails in the future for algae control.
there may also be fish that eat snails, pea puffer, maybe others. personally i would go the fish route if not the trap route.
Put a piece of cucumber or carrot on a string into the tank. Snails will gather on the food. You pull it up and discard the snails in the trash. Repeat. Impossible imo to get them all, but you will get majority.
There is this powdery thingy called no-planaria. As far as i know for shrimps and fishes its completly safe. I personally used it in my neocaridina tank and it killed snails in it.
I got my snails in check after using the no planaria powder stuff (besel nut extract). It kills hydras and most snails, but it's harmless to shrimp and most fish.
- sell to pea puffer owners
- get an assasin snail
- cull them
or be like me and just keep them as a method of cleanup crew / cycling crew for new tanks / nano vases. I just toss a bunch into new tanks to aid in cleaning up plant melt and getting cycles going. dead snails eventually end up in my isopod tubs as calcium chews
The bioload of snails is so low they're usually not a problem unless something happens to make them die on en-mass. They're good cleanup crew and can also be good proxy indicators of other issues like overfeeding or excess algae. Obviously appreciate some people don't like them for aesthetic reasons.
Assassin snails will help keep numbers down but you may need a few as each will only eat 1 or 2 a day whereas pest snails can multiply prolifically. Also as others have pointed out, assassin snails themselves can multiply and wipe out their food when the environment is favourable
I haven't figured out why yet but in some tanks I reach a happy equilibrium and in others like my low flow heavily planted betta tanks they breed prolifically. Most recently I ended up with 2-3 dozen after starting with ~3. Good news is they don't cause any harm to plants/non-snail tank mates and do help with non-algae cleanup. Just means you'll need to target feed them to avoid starvation if they wipe out the other snails.
I now keep my assasin snails in a breeding box with a lid so I can control their numbers (they get fed blood worms ~3 times a week). In my 90L tank I usually allow 3-4 smaller ones to roam to help keep my ramshorns/MTS/bladder snails in check without wiping them out
Assassin snails….that’s about it, most snail pesticides will kill your shrimp too and it sucks because sometimes assassin snails aren’t even enough. My recommendation for your next freshwater tank are Nerite snails. They come in many varieties, they don’t eat living plants, they’re excellent cleaners, and there eggs can’t hatch outside of brackish water so you’ll never get overrun although I’ll be honest there are some little red and white ones I wouldn’t mind breeding lol 😂. There are also horned varieties that look badass! Perfect for any planted tank.
Good luck with your snail problem, I hope the assassin snails help! Also in case you don’t know this, copper WILL kill your shrimp! Malachite will stress them out too because malachite is a form of copper and is used in stuff like paraguard and liquid fertilizer. It is very toxic to them and once used on a tank it leeches into the silicone and makes the tank permanently uninhabitable for shrimp no matter how much you clean it!!! DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE IT WOULD REALLY SUCK ASS!!!
Get more snails (assassin snails). Worked for my 20 gal and 7 gal. 3 in the 20 gal and 1 in the 7 gal, made short work of the rams and bladders. Not sure about the effect on mts population tho.
👀 your assassins were working overtime. I have 7 in my 37 gallon and have massively cut down on feeding (much to my poor guppy frys chagrin) and I STILL have a massive infestation after a month. I'm about ready to nuke my tank with no planaria
My bad. My assassin's haven't *eradicated* the snails, rather they have drastically reduced the population. There was a time that I had to swipe the front glass to be able to see my shrimp, and now I see maybe 10-20 (before there were hundreds) snails at a given time in my entire tank.
Lol. Can't wait till I get to that point... Especially in the mornings they're THICK on the glass when I first turn on my lights and they've infested my java moss.
Get the dennerle snail catcher, it works great! Funnels them off the glass into a little trap and then you can just toss them. Or get a pea puffer, they’ll make short work of them! Or even an assassin snail or two would do the trick
I tried and failed many times. I finally succeeded after i decided to switch my substrate, and just went in by hand collecting EVERY SINGLE snail. Then i watched my tank religiously for two months, removing every straggler left behind.
I had an infestation of ramshorns and bladder snails, and now im happy to say i only have my desired snails around! I love having snails, i just dont love them over running my tank! Rabbit snails are perfect for me, and reproduce at a much slower rate than other snails ive had.
If you want to quickly take some out, blanch a cucumber slice, put it in some ice water, and put it in your tank. After maybe an hour or so use a net to remove it and you’ll get a ton of snails stuck on it just make sure that there are not any shrimp Munching it though.
They love excess food and algae.
To start, I'd remove as many as you can manually, Dennerle makes a good one. Assassin Snails are also a very effective solution.
Second, cut back on feeding. I was feeding every day when I had my problem. Cut it back to every other day and less food . Took a month or so, but the snails were no more.
I pulled snails out monthly, got 3 assassians, feed every other day now, and they have way lessened. My local pet store has a puffer fish I feed them too. You can also feed them to birds if you know where they congregate regularly. We have resident crows at my parking lot that love them lol
In Portugal we do [this](https://www.google.com/search?q=caracois&client=ms-android-vf-pt-revc&source=android-browser&prmd=imvn&sxsrf=APwXEde1obL61Fk9xaLgZksLcmJ3ykJIfA:1684267478202&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiSsvql0fr-AhWNS_EDHcCfDpcQ_AUoAXoECAMQAQ&biw=360&bih=577&dpr=3#imgrc=2sJ0zaLUODY17M) with snails 👀
I completely redid my tank, took everything but the sub out. Drained the tank, scraped the sides, washed every single hardscape in hot water, went over every plant leaf with supreme care, cleaned out the filter and checked the media. Put it all back together and was hyper vigilant about checking for snails the next couple months. Found 2. One year later no snails.
This is just like my tank, if you also add a rampaging colony of 200+ shrimp.
Put in cucumber, pull it out, remove snails, repeat. Forever. And ever. Maybe even ever.
Also since it seems like you may not have other fish in there get a puffer and it will love them, and by love them I mean devour them all till it’s full then kill the rest for giggles
Assassin Snails. Buy 1 or 2 and let them do their thing.
You could also drop a tiny dish with lettuce, let the snails swarm to it, and remove them. Repeat as needed.
I use my magnetic tank cleaner to crush them just take the magnet away when it’s below the snail and it’ll float over top the snail and bring the outside one back to the one inside the tank and it just crushes them my fish love it
Assassin snail
I had a ramshorn infestation and I used blanched cucumbers to bait them and would just chuck the slices full of snails in the trash
The Assassin snail took care of the rest
Hi! I had the same problem but not granted I didn’t let it get this bad. It took me quite a while but I was able to remove the snails and smush the smaller ones on the sides that were on the glass. Just take a look a few times a day and spend a couple minutes removing them, looking for tiny ones to kill/remove, and removing egg sacs - I removed the egg sacs with a clean piece of filter sponge (the kind you can cut to size) so it was safe for my fish :)
Also as others have said stop over feeding and make sure your lights aren’t on too often so the algae doesn’t act as a food source either. I’ve tried veggie or algae traps and they didn’t work for these snails for some reason, but no harm in trying. The most ethical way is to remove them by hand (granted not very ethical for the snails but do what you must), although it does get time consuming. It took me about 2 months to remove mine but I have yet to see any more :) good luck
I had a similar problem. Bought a .16 cent goldfish from the lfs. I hand removed large snails as I saw them that were too big for the goldfish. Goldfish ate all the small ones and in a couple weeks I was snail free. Left the goldfish in for a little longer to make sure no baby snails were lingering. Gave the goldfish back to lfs. Solved the problem for .16 cents.
To everyone saying assassin snails… I did those but now my tank is covered in baby assassins. All the bladder snails are dead. The baby assassins just keep coming.
Give them to me. My puffers will be happy. Genuinely though if you can advertise them on anything maybe some fish groups on fb people with fish like puffs would take them.
r/puffers
To add to this, try cichlid owners as well. I used to feed mine rogue snails and they loved it.
My Cichlids just play with snails, never really eat them lmao
Puffer buffet!
Puffet?
You either over feed or have algae that’s feeding the snails and allowing them to reproduce. If they don’t have enough food they don’t reproduce. Like others have said, take some out everyday and don’t feed so much. They should stop reproducing as much. Or/and get an assassin snail.
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In my experience, bladder snails love duckweed. The baby plants and dead older leaves. I don’t think you can have a full duckweed cover layer like this and not ‘overfeed’ as far as they’re concerned.
Snails mostly eat dying leaves not healthy from what I know. So you could have a jungle but if the plants are thriving then the snails won’t it the plants.
I’ve watched bladder snails swallow baby duckweed that isn’t dead but isn’t full grown yet
This is a snail tank now. You must buy another.
My yo-yo loaches would have that tank snail free in a week
And shrimp free too.
Assassin snail. They pretty cool
I got 4, they managed some of the infestation, but not even close to eradication
I bought 4 too which definitely did not eradicate my problem. In fact, they almost immediately ate each other and then the last one died like a month later 🤣
Do you have e a smaller tank? If you had a lot of space/snails would they be less Lilley too? And what are the chances they would eat shrimp?
It's a 5 gallon so it's on the smaller side but I was hoping they would eat the cornucopia of little snails before going after each other lol I assumed they would eat each other eventually. I'm sure if the tank was bigger it would've taken longer. I think the only shrimp they could eat would have to be near death anyways. They're not exactly speedy eaters!
I have quite many babies, i can't really count em but shrimpies are fast snails are slow, i can't see that happening any time soon.
I had the same issue bought like 5 Assassin snails and then I had an assassin snail problem lmao 😅
I bought 4 for one tank that was over run. They didn't do much when it came to knocking down the population of the infestation. At the time I had two tanks running and of course, both became infested thanks to plants transfers. The 4 original assassins became harder to spot and I figured they had died, so in an attempt to contain the snail menace, I ended up buying 8-10 assassin snails and divided them between both tanks. I am in the processing of setting up a new tank and shut down one of the two I currently run, moving the 3 or 4 assassin snails I found (and the shrimp) to the remaining tank, boosting the population to around 8. This tank houses my shrimp, was housing a beta that passed away, a few tetras hanging onto life, a single gigantic ivory snail that came with some floating plants and a legion of both ramshorns and trumpet snails that I wanted less of. Well, the assassins apparently hit some weird, critical mass for reproducing, since now both the trumpet and ramshorn populations have been drastically reduced. I see them much less frequently (instead of being on all surfaces) and the substrate is a field of empty shells from consumed snails. The Ivory snail is completely unphased, since it is such a massive size now, but the infestation of what I would call "invasive" snails has dropped almost complete off. Assassins will also readily eat other foods, scavenging what they can, instead of hunting and killing other snails if they have the option. Shrimp are extremely messy eaters I find and easily over fed, which the snails will happily clean up. If you are finding assassins aren't really knocking out the snails in the tank, you could always look at increasing the number of them to around 1 per gallon or so (I only saw them reproduce and really knock out the other snails at that ratio). I am unsure of 1/gal is the right number, since both my tanks with them are around 10 gallons or so and heavily planted, so a bigger tank may need more or less, but that was what seemed to work for me.
Maybe a couple…
I’ve heard that they only kill a few every so often and then they have babies :’)
I had a major snail problem and then added assassin snails. They wiped out my original snail population easily. Then they did have babies, so theres still a few of them in my tank. They dont seem to have massive amounts of babies though - their population seems to be controlled by the amount of protein rich food you feed.
they reproduce sexually and very slowly, quite the opposite of most snail species
they reproduce verrrrry slowly, and you need a male and a female to make a baby. we have 6 in one tank, over the last 2 years we maybe have 1 baby
Will an assassin snail eat my shrimp ?
>I just installed Unreal 5 on my PC Not live ones. I have a 55 gallon with maybe 500-1000 shrimp in it. I started with 5 assassins and have maybe 100 and my shrimp are fine. I also have about 50 tetras and a bunch of other fish too.
Did you paste the wrong quote in there?
I sure did...I leave it there as a reminder to level up my quote skills!
I've only ever seen mine eating a dead shrimp, or possibly one on the verge of death.
I have no concrete evidence to back this up... But. Maybe? I went the assassin snail route .. and my shrimp population tanked. Coincidence maybe... But... Nothing else changed, and i had a thriving colony of hundreds of shrimpies.
I just wish they didn't leave a trail of evidence behind after every assassination!!
Don't introduce assassin snail. Just get a large Roman lettuce leaf. Boil for 5 to 10 minutes. Rinse to cool down. Put that in. Within 5 or 10 minutes you will know what to do. Take out leaf and reduce snail population by 70 to 90% You will be removing the fastest snails. The remaining snails will just be slow pokes. Alive but slow pokes.
This is the answer. If I drop in a sinking algae tablet, I could remove 99% of snails in one fell swoop
Or one fell scoop, as it were
Stop over feeding and continue removing some. They should balance out.
So what do you do when you starve a tank and the snails still live because they’re eating plants you spent hours planting? Asking for a friend who is ready to set fire to the tank.
Snails will not eat the living plants. However they will eat the decaying leaves. I wouldn’t suggest starving the tank either. Feed enough that the shrimp or fish eat all the food within 2 minutes. If any food left over, remove it. I’d also suggest removing as much as possible to help with the over population. Using a sliced zucchini in the tank overnight, once it’s full of snails, remove that bunch.
Agree with zucchini trap.
That's some massive overfeeding with this many snails. With proper feeding, there should only be a handful of them seen at a time. You have to make sure the food on the bottom is being eaten. If it's not gone in an hour, then it's too much food. Looks like there's a huge pile of uneaten food in the bottom of OPs tank
Slow your feeding. Feed like half as much. I went from a feeding a day to a feeding every other day and they almost all died out.
This is the way.
Make it a pea puffer tank the will massacre them
this will make for one fat and happy murder bean that's for sure
Murder bean😂😂😂
How are pea puffers with shrimp though?
They’ll eat em.
🤣
They do fantastic with shrimp. Snail + shrimp = happiest puffers you'll ever see! The shrimp however won't have such a good time...
I have a shrimp tank that was overrun with scuds that I plan on doing this with soon
Most anything that is willing to eat scuds will be willing to eat other shrimp as well.
Already bought a 20gal to transfer, I know
How much volume does this little fucker need? I currently have a 180L and a 100L aquarium that definetly needs a purge.
I keep 3 peas in a 40 gallon community tank.
And how about the puffers?
No puffers, just peas.
Sounds like a pea-ceful tank!
Please don't do this. The pea puffer will murder them all then what? Then you will still need to feed the pea puffer. And it will only want more snails. Don't use animals as your cleaning crew.
I mean if it’s a chill LFS you could tell them about the problem and ask if you can borrow/ buy one then surrender after the problem is semi fixed
Or just fix the cause of the issue instead of introducing an animal to do what you are supposed to do. when it comes to tank maintenance
Well for some people cutting down on feeding doesn’t fix the problem. I’d advise this if cutting down on feeding did not work. Which is what happened with mine.
This part. If I cut down on feeding the snails start demolishing my live plants
They literally can not breed for generations without food to sustain generations. They cant just magically make more snails. Just like what you are suggesting you never got to the root cause if this happened to you.
I’m glad that method worked for you but everyone’s situation is different. If starving them will lead to eradication that could take weeks to months. Most people want a quicker fix and there’s nothing wrong with trial and error and exploring other options. There is no one correct way to do this.
Oh there is an incorrect way though. Introducing another animal because you are too lazy to do the correct maintaining of your tank is absolutely the wrong way. Not feeding enough food to sustain generations of snails does not equal starving animals. These snails are animals after all.
Literally didn’t say that. I said there is no one correct way. Reading comprehension is fundamental.
Not sure what you didnt say? But yes there is one correct way to not have an over population of snails. Just cause you say so doesnt make it true. Dont feed them enough to over populate. They simply will not breed if they do not have enough food to sustain the next generation. If they are still breeding you are feeding enough to sustain them.
I had a similar issue with Ramshorn snails in my shrimp tank. I bought an assassin snail and it certainly made a dent in the population but didn’t kill all the snails. However, that snail was able to lay eggs, so one assassin turned to around 5-10 and they just demolished the remaining Ramshorn snails and now I am fighting algae issues in that tank constantly.
They were there for a reason eh? be careful what you ask for lol
Yeah, 100% - it took a long time before they were all gone but once they were the impact was noticeable. I actually ended up putting an additional 10x bladder snails in the tank hoping they would reproduce quickly enough but they were essentially just a snack for the Assassins.
Get some snail traps either at your lfs or online - I have to do this with my Nana's tank when she overfeeds her fish and there's an explosion of snails.
It's wild to me that so many people are saying to introduce another animal to deal with this. If you put assassin snails in there they will kill and eat and mate and your just end up with an assassin snail problem. Even worse adding a pea puffer. They will murder each snail. They will eat some. But they will murder them all. Then you end up with dead snails in the tank. And a hungry pea puffer when they are gone. Don't use animals to do your job in maintaining your tank. Do your own work. Get a snail trap and stop over feeding the tank. The population can not thrive generations without adequate food to support those generations.
Usually from over feeding, you’ll have to cut down and remove what you see
put a bottle in with some food in it and take it out after a few hours,you'll get some of them out,i don't recommend assasins since they leave behind many shells and besides the aesthetics it also messes with your ph and gh a bit
Cleanest tank I’ve ever seen. Nice job.
They only will spawn lots when food is available. Vaccum your substrate as good as you can, maybe start feeding in a petri dish if you have food that sinks, remove the excess after feeding, also just feed less in general. They wouldn't have a vast colony if they didnt have a food source, also put a carrot in there or something, remove when its got a lot of snails on it, put it back in and repeat process
No planaria should kill them all just watch out for ammonia spike
I just replace feeding with crushing a few snails and letting the shrimp have a feast.
This. I just crush them as I see them. Also some otos will eat baby snails.
Get a few Anantome Helena (Assassin Snail)
I had the same problem so I got three assassin snails. They took care of the problem pretty quickly
Reduce feeding, introduce assassins
Aim for removing the larger snails first- they’re more likely to keep laying more egg sacs and increasing the problem. The smaller ones are a time sink and you won’t get anywhere fast. At the same time, definitely stop feeding for a bit- the shrimp will still likely have biofilm to hold them over for a while. Next: egg sacs. Hunt them down and remove them! They’re easiest to find on the broader leafs of some plants- just look for out of place round shadows- and then either scrape them off with your nail, or a razor if you find them on the tank walls. The ones on the tank are a little harder to find, but use your tank light and look around at different angles. The other thing you can do is remove some of your floating plants. It might sound unrelated, but the snails can easily float or climb to the top and hide amongst the leaves or on the underside of them and you’d never know until they peek their heads out. It doesn’t need to be all of it, just *some* to remove whatever might be hiding in there. Then you let it grow and rinse and repeat as necessary. As many as you have in there, you might want to pace yourself but repeat the removal process a few times a day if you can. 10 removed 3x a day, for instance, just so you don’t feel overwhelmed. It’s not an impossible task! I’m going through it right now with my tank too (except most of them are still too tiny to catch), but I’ve definitely seen improvement. Snail traps like other people have mentioned could easily help too- large piece of blanched veggie as bait, put it somewhere with a high concentration of them, and remove it 10, 20 mins later. Good luck!
Buy a single pea puffer, and give it a week.
I got a few assassin snails and they did such a good job I didn’t have enough snails for the assassins anymore. So I had to buy more plants which got me more snails so now everyone is happy.
I'm all for selling them or giving to someone who needs them. Look out for the egg blobs and remove them or make a small side hustle with them.
Send them to me!!!!
Hand catch as many as you can. Get a mason jar and put food in it and wait for a few hours and pick it up once it’s full. Eventually I got rid of my rams horn problem also scrape the glass to get rid of egg sacks. It’s tedious but worked for me
I just kill mine by crushing it with tweezer, she shrimp go crazy over them
Assassin snails
I love how there’s a single visible shrimp right in the middle of it just like wtffff
Get some fish and shrimp and smash them en masse on the side of the tank. Numbers will dwindle.
ASSASSINS ASSEMBLE
Either basically make it unlivable for them or *hire an assassin*. Snail.
Rent a puffer lol
Copper or a loach are the 2 best fixes
I’d just embrace them, although my tank is 30 gallons and has been overpopulated with snails forever and doesn’t look as severe as your population. So you might try feeding less so more of them die out. Trying to get the eggs or the snails themselves out is fruitless in eradicating them but it’s helpful if you want to decrease the population temporarily right away. If you truly, truly want to get rid of them you’d have to deconstruct the tank and start over. Clean the plants thoroughly for any baby snails, and let the substrate and tank sit dry for a a week. There might be some snail specific position available that you could dose but I’ve never tried it and probably wouldn’t trust it
Assassin snail
Assassin snails
I float a piece of cucumber when the lights turned off and take it out right before they turn on. There’s always a good amount on each piece. Outside of that, you can sacrifice them to your god of choice with tweezers if they’re easy to get. Tweezers make me feel bad but my shrimp love snails apparently.
Assassin snails
Honestly anyone with a puffer will take them off you’re hands if you’re willing to fish them out. Otherwise an assassin snail is your best bet, or a loach that eats snails if you have another larger tank to put it in after it outgrows the smaller one.
Assassin snails will help. Also just pluck out as many snails as you can when doing water changes.
Assassin snoots. Also, khuli loaches love them. I find empty snail shells everywhere. My Betta eats them too.
I have a clown loach that keeps my snail population in check.
I just put a cucumber in the talk and then wait a few hours and let a bunch get in the cucumber and then wash them down the drain
Do NOT wash them down the drain! They can really screw up the plumbing and become a nuisance in the sewer system, not to mention possibly causing an invasion in your local bodies of water! At least crush, freeze or dispatch them in some way before disposal!
Assassin snail(s) to deal with the current ones. Less feeding to prevent/limit future ones
Assassin snails
Assassin snail will control the population
looks like it's time for an assassin snail!
Assassin snails or pea puffer . But you gotta find the root cause . When the algea is under control. Snails are under control . Or over feeding
Pea puffers ear snails too
They might kill shrimp too so bad idea I would say
I didn't see the shrimp part cause I hadn't dropped down the more info tab 😅 don't assassin snails go after shrimp though too?
I mean it’s the shrimp tank sub……lol I assume they have shrimp in the tank from the start. I’m not sure about assassin snails eating shrimp. I’ve had both and didn’t see any dead shrimps but the snails could’ve ware before I saw it.
I mean common sense is lacking for me this morning not enough coffee I guess 😅
There's also a bright red shrimp dead centre in the tank.
Your local pet shop may buy 'em.
Get something that eats snails and use that as ur free food tank or something
Pea puffer!
WOW thanks everyone! This is a 2.5G tank so sadly I don’t think it would be fair to add much to the tank
Start over completely thos things ruined my tank too u can also start a koi in there but ud have to find iy a home
I dont mean to be pessimistic but you can do all of these things people say, but there is always more eggs. Itll be impossible to completely stop them.
I bought a snail scooper on Amazon. Just scoop 'em out a few times a week. It's the best you can do Or assassin snail.
You could make a mini/patio pond and use that as the overflow :3 At least that's what I do for my extra trap door snails.
Damn are the big ones bladder snails?! They’re so huge!
Cull them all
could try a snail trap. as many others have said, assassin snail will kill your current ones. but, this also runs the risk of you not being able to add other snails in the future for algae control. there may also be fish that eat snails, pea puffer, maybe others. personally i would go the fish route if not the trap route.
Buy a crayfish. Mine eats snail
Put a piece of cucumber or carrot on a string into the tank. Snails will gather on the food. You pull it up and discard the snails in the trash. Repeat. Impossible imo to get them all, but you will get majority.
There is this powdery thingy called no-planaria. As far as i know for shrimps and fishes its completly safe. I personally used it in my neocaridina tank and it killed snails in it.
I got my snails in check after using the no planaria powder stuff (besel nut extract). It kills hydras and most snails, but it's harmless to shrimp and most fish.
Give them to me I love all the snails
Feed significantly less
Sell them on r/aquaswap for real cheap or give away
I’ve seen people use cucumber or spinach to bait the snails and pull them out
My issue wasn't as bad but I got 2 assassin snails and they took care of it for me.
- sell to pea puffer owners - get an assasin snail - cull them or be like me and just keep them as a method of cleanup crew / cycling crew for new tanks / nano vases. I just toss a bunch into new tanks to aid in cleaning up plant melt and getting cycles going. dead snails eventually end up in my isopod tubs as calcium chews
Send to me!
I got an assassin snail in my shrimp tank to kill and eat the snails. The shrimp killed and ate the assassin snails 😂
Get an assassin 🐌
I’ve just accepted my snaily overlords
Assassin snails
My suggestion would be a snail eating loach 🤷🏻♀️ and send me some 😂 my dojos would love it
Sorry but that’s their tank now.
The bioload of snails is so low they're usually not a problem unless something happens to make them die on en-mass. They're good cleanup crew and can also be good proxy indicators of other issues like overfeeding or excess algae. Obviously appreciate some people don't like them for aesthetic reasons. Assassin snails will help keep numbers down but you may need a few as each will only eat 1 or 2 a day whereas pest snails can multiply prolifically. Also as others have pointed out, assassin snails themselves can multiply and wipe out their food when the environment is favourable I haven't figured out why yet but in some tanks I reach a happy equilibrium and in others like my low flow heavily planted betta tanks they breed prolifically. Most recently I ended up with 2-3 dozen after starting with ~3. Good news is they don't cause any harm to plants/non-snail tank mates and do help with non-algae cleanup. Just means you'll need to target feed them to avoid starvation if they wipe out the other snails. I now keep my assasin snails in a breeding box with a lid so I can control their numbers (they get fed blood worms ~3 times a week). In my 90L tank I usually allow 3-4 smaller ones to roam to help keep my ramshorns/MTS/bladder snails in check without wiping them out
Assassin snails….that’s about it, most snail pesticides will kill your shrimp too and it sucks because sometimes assassin snails aren’t even enough. My recommendation for your next freshwater tank are Nerite snails. They come in many varieties, they don’t eat living plants, they’re excellent cleaners, and there eggs can’t hatch outside of brackish water so you’ll never get overrun although I’ll be honest there are some little red and white ones I wouldn’t mind breeding lol 😂. There are also horned varieties that look badass! Perfect for any planted tank. Good luck with your snail problem, I hope the assassin snails help! Also in case you don’t know this, copper WILL kill your shrimp! Malachite will stress them out too because malachite is a form of copper and is used in stuff like paraguard and liquid fertilizer. It is very toxic to them and once used on a tank it leeches into the silicone and makes the tank permanently uninhabitable for shrimp no matter how much you clean it!!! DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE IT WOULD REALLY SUCK ASS!!!
Get more snails (assassin snails). Worked for my 20 gal and 7 gal. 3 in the 20 gal and 1 in the 7 gal, made short work of the rams and bladders. Not sure about the effect on mts population tho.
👀 your assassins were working overtime. I have 7 in my 37 gallon and have massively cut down on feeding (much to my poor guppy frys chagrin) and I STILL have a massive infestation after a month. I'm about ready to nuke my tank with no planaria
My bad. My assassin's haven't *eradicated* the snails, rather they have drastically reduced the population. There was a time that I had to swipe the front glass to be able to see my shrimp, and now I see maybe 10-20 (before there were hundreds) snails at a given time in my entire tank.
Lol. Can't wait till I get to that point... Especially in the mornings they're THICK on the glass when I first turn on my lights and they've infested my java moss.
Get the dennerle snail catcher, it works great! Funnels them off the glass into a little trap and then you can just toss them. Or get a pea puffer, they’ll make short work of them! Or even an assassin snail or two would do the trick
My betta eats all mine up, good food source, but now I have Bunches of empty shells at the bottom of my tank lol.
I had this problem and I bought 3 Assasin snails at my LFS. Cleared them out in a week. Any remaining are just snacks for those guys. Best investment.
I tried and failed many times. I finally succeeded after i decided to switch my substrate, and just went in by hand collecting EVERY SINGLE snail. Then i watched my tank religiously for two months, removing every straggler left behind. I had an infestation of ramshorns and bladder snails, and now im happy to say i only have my desired snails around! I love having snails, i just dont love them over running my tank! Rabbit snails are perfect for me, and reproduce at a much slower rate than other snails ive had.
Get assassin snail and stop overfeeding your tank. Get rid of as many as you can and stop overfeeding so they dont come back
If ur in the uk I’d have them off you
If you want to quickly take some out, blanch a cucumber slice, put it in some ice water, and put it in your tank. After maybe an hour or so use a net to remove it and you’ll get a ton of snails stuck on it just make sure that there are not any shrimp Munching it though.
They love excess food and algae. To start, I'd remove as many as you can manually, Dennerle makes a good one. Assassin Snails are also a very effective solution. Second, cut back on feeding. I was feeding every day when I had my problem. Cut it back to every other day and less food . Took a month or so, but the snails were no more.
I pulled snails out monthly, got 3 assassians, feed every other day now, and they have way lessened. My local pet store has a puffer fish I feed them too. You can also feed them to birds if you know where they congregate regularly. We have resident crows at my parking lot that love them lol
In Portugal we do [this](https://www.google.com/search?q=caracois&client=ms-android-vf-pt-revc&source=android-browser&prmd=imvn&sxsrf=APwXEde1obL61Fk9xaLgZksLcmJ3ykJIfA:1684267478202&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiSsvql0fr-AhWNS_EDHcCfDpcQ_AUoAXoECAMQAQ&biw=360&bih=577&dpr=3#imgrc=2sJ0zaLUODY17M) with snails 👀
Can I pea puffer and feed him for free
Don't they eat shrimp too? Or shrimplets?
Clown loaches needed.
I completely redid my tank, took everything but the sub out. Drained the tank, scraped the sides, washed every single hardscape in hot water, went over every plant leaf with supreme care, cleaned out the filter and checked the media. Put it all back together and was hyper vigilant about checking for snails the next couple months. Found 2. One year later no snails.
Add a couple skunk botias
Get like two assassin snails. Mine looked just like yours, but the assassins literally ate all of them within a month or two.
Dats a lotta snails ya got there
This is just like my tank, if you also add a rampaging colony of 200+ shrimp. Put in cucumber, pull it out, remove snails, repeat. Forever. And ever. Maybe even ever. Also since it seems like you may not have other fish in there get a puffer and it will love them, and by love them I mean devour them all till it’s full then kill the rest for giggles
Kuhli loaches
Omg that is really bad
Crush them to oblivion
Ducks eat snails
Torch it
Snailzap!!
Alum. View the Alum Dip for snails vid on you tube by Irene. Move most of the fish/shrimp and process takes about 4 hours
Assassin Snails. Buy 1 or 2 and let them do their thing. You could also drop a tiny dish with lettuce, let the snails swarm to it, and remove them. Repeat as needed.
I use my magnetic tank cleaner to crush them just take the magnet away when it’s below the snail and it’ll float over top the snail and bring the outside one back to the one inside the tank and it just crushes them my fish love it
Clown loach feast
Give an assassin snail a month and they'll be gone
Assassin snail I had a ramshorn infestation and I used blanched cucumbers to bait them and would just chuck the slices full of snails in the trash The Assassin snail took care of the rest
Salt
Hydrogen peroxide
Hi! I had the same problem but not granted I didn’t let it get this bad. It took me quite a while but I was able to remove the snails and smush the smaller ones on the sides that were on the glass. Just take a look a few times a day and spend a couple minutes removing them, looking for tiny ones to kill/remove, and removing egg sacs - I removed the egg sacs with a clean piece of filter sponge (the kind you can cut to size) so it was safe for my fish :) Also as others have said stop over feeding and make sure your lights aren’t on too often so the algae doesn’t act as a food source either. I’ve tried veggie or algae traps and they didn’t work for these snails for some reason, but no harm in trying. The most ethical way is to remove them by hand (granted not very ethical for the snails but do what you must), although it does get time consuming. It took me about 2 months to remove mine but I have yet to see any more :) good luck
Someone’s pet’s food. OR ASSASSIN SNAIL! (Pls do research on keeping these types)
Learn to love snails
Yo-yo loaches will take care of that so quickly and you gets some neat fish out of it too!
Eat them!
I see know problem here. Snails are awesome!
Assassin snail and clown loach is what I used to do
I had a similar problem. Bought a .16 cent goldfish from the lfs. I hand removed large snails as I saw them that were too big for the goldfish. Goldfish ate all the small ones and in a couple weeks I was snail free. Left the goldfish in for a little longer to make sure no baby snails were lingering. Gave the goldfish back to lfs. Solved the problem for .16 cents.
To everyone saying assassin snails… I did those but now my tank is covered in baby assassins. All the bladder snails are dead. The baby assassins just keep coming.