Giant Snail Problem

[breakaway]

The Plants I bought recently and put in my tank brought an uninvited visitor, the annoying Snail :evil: . I have read a lot about these little plagues and heard they breed like rabbits and quickly turn ur aquarium into a snail nursery. Someone please help me out, I need to kill them, and fast. So far I've been getting them out by hand and killing them. There isn't a lot of them there, and I would not like to wait around and find out What its like when there is. Please help

Also Another Question:

If I buy an apple snail, won't it crawl outta the tank ?

Any Posts appreciated

[suemack]

couple of choices for you Breakaway......

1. keep squishing - I've had snails in my tanks since I first bought plants, I squish them (my fish gobble up the squished bits with relish) and siphon up the baby snails when I clean the tank......have never been over-run as I regularly siphon my gravel.

2. get one of the snail eating fish.....most loaches, puffers (but be warned - imo puffers are rarely ok with other fish)

3. strip the tank down, sterilise everything and hope that you don't miss a baby........and never buy plants from tanks with snail populations/or at least sterilise them prior to putting into the tanks

4. use some of the snail rid preparations that are available.......I have never used them so cannot give you any idea of the success rate of them. You would need to do water changes I imagine as all those dead bodies cannot be good for water quality.

Apple snails, or so I've heard, eat plants.

good luck with the snails......mine tell me when the water's too soft (am on rain water), have also heard that fry feed on the snail poop (not sure if this is true but sounds good to me :lol: )

Sue

[breakaway]

I read somewhere that snails can die and poision the aquarium.... is this true ? And if It is, How do you prevent it ?

[suemack]

same as for the fish........good water quality.

[Rob]

The snails dying and poisoning the tank is just the same as a fish dying and being left in the tank - it's not so much poisoning as it is polluting.

Regarding Apple snails - if you haven't got the tank covered then the snails may crawl out (usually when they're looking for a place to lay their eggs). The yellow ones will definitely clear fell plants - the brown ones are more plant friendly and will usually only attack plants when there has been no other food for them (turns out that the two colours are actually different species rather than colour forms of the same species).

[breakaway]

Thanx guys, the replies really help me out a lot.

[kim]

you can cut a potato in half and wash it then put it in your tank at night, i put it in a net and then in the morning before you put the lights on take it out , snails will be on the potato! you will have to repeat this a few times maybe even for a week but that way you are not killing the snails in the tank. (use a new potato every night)

or get loaches they do a nice job, even rams can clean them up sometimes.

you can use the had a snail but what happens when a snail dies it puts out eggs so when the babys hatch you have to use it again and can be hard on some fish and plants .

doing a good water change brings the snails out of the gravel.

over feeding can give you snails and make them breed faster,

good luck