I thought I'd try my hand at live plants. I got a "Jungle vail". Now my tank has small snails
I'm not into having snails.
MY tank is a 45 tall with 10 neons, 10 glo-lights, 10 albino cories, 1 small pleco.
I have a Ecplise system 3 filter as well as a UGF with 2 Aqua Clear 30 power heads.
How do I get rid of the snails with out hurting my fish?
Thanks in advance
Jim

You can try some clown loaches or other type of loach. Or put a container in with some carrot or green peas and collect them from there. No other ways to go about it unless you want to use chems. Chems are not a good way to do it though.

I wouldn't recommend a clown loach for a 45gal.

I would try to trap the snails with an algae wafer or veggies as Jackson mentions.

dirtydawg10 wrote:

I wouldn't recommend a clown loach for a 45gal.

I would try to trap the snails with an algae wafer or veggies as Jackson mentions.

If you think a few clown loach is too big for a 45gal then I guess you are right. I know that most places do not sell huge clown loaches so a 45gal could hold 5x2'''ers for a very long time. They grow very very slow and get along great with small fish.

You could try a dwarf loach as well. They stay small like 2''-3'' depending on the type you find. Just remeber dont keep loaches in less than groups of 5.

Thank you all. I was hopping that just adding salt would do the trick. Glad I asked first.
I may go with the clowns, I can move them to my 75g when they start to get big or finish the snails off.
Thanks again
Jim

1 clown loach will outgrow a 45gal, never mind 5. Clown loaches can grow to 12"-14" so you can imagine how much space 5 of them will need. They do grow slowly but unless you plan to get rid of them when they are older or are planning on a much larger tank (larger than your 75 too) I would recommend against them There are some smaller Botia loaches which will eat snails and won't get nearly as large.

What d says is spot on. Clowns are cool, but they get massive.

What is most people's aversion to small snails anyway? I don't mind 'em but it seems like I'm in a small minority.

Not trying to sound rude or step on any toes here.
They will take years and years for them to grow to 12''-16'' and it is also very very rare for them to reach that size in a hobbyists tank. Experts ( people who dedicate their lives to these fish ) house groups of 20+ in 180's and they have ones that are about 13'' in there and the smallest being about 8.5'' last time I saw. You are making it seem like in 2 years the fish will be so big that a 75gal will not be enough space. If you dropped in 5@ 3'' into that 75gal you will have year and years to go until you need to upgrade their home.

Plus dont most of you keep cichlids that reach over 12''?

What do you keep them in?

The problem with small snails is they get into the filters and cause trouble. They also make it hard to breed fish that are cave spawners because they take over the caves. They make a mess and they are just ugly. I am screwed right now with my L-134's tank. I just took out about 300 snails today and this is an weekly thing. I dont know what to do because they just keep coming back in larger numbers. Even my turtles hate them already and wont eat them anymore LOL

Some people here do keep cichlids that reach 12"+ but they don't keep 5 of them in a 45gal tank. I'm trying to let the OP know that there are better choices than clown loaches to take care of snails. I don't try to make a habbit of adding fish to my tanks just to take care of a temporary problem.

Get some zebra loaches or just clean up the problem yourself by removing the snails from your tank. Whatever way you decide to go I would recommend checking out this website...http://www.loaches.com/species-index/clown-loach-chromobotia-macracanthus...especially if you plan to get loaches to take care of your snail problems.

Had-a-snail. product that kills inverts

Jackson and D are both right. Clowns do grow extreamly slow but once they hit the 12-16" mark they will be too big for a 45g

I never thought of it for breeding problems. The only fish I'd like to breed at some point is a mouthbrooder. As for the filter thing, I've never noticed it being a problem. A lot of my filtration is DIY canisters though, and the bigger pumps will chop up small comets into bits and force 'em through if I don't use a prefilter.

Depending on how much you like your other fish you could always get a figure eight puffer or two. They make short work of snails, and near anything else that's name doesn't start with pleco and end in stomus.

African mud turtles, also never ever get tired of eating snails either. They'd eat 'em all day and night if I let them.

Thanks for the link. That answered a lot of questions.
I'm thinking I'm going to nuke the tank in a strong bleach solution, running the plastic plants through the Micro-wave, and boil the heck out of the rocks.
I bought the 45 to be a comunity tank, loaches just won't work

You may be better off boiling the fake plants with the rocks. Microwaves do funny (though sometimes cool looking) things to plastic that isn't supposed to go in the microwave.

Well I know from my own experience with clown loaches that you can house many of them in a 75gal until they hit the 4''-6'' mark. I grew out 52 of them in a 75gal. They grew sort of fast because I was doing water chnages every day and had the temps up above 90f. They went in my 230+ after they reached that size and then after a year my tank crashed ( well all the air supplies went out at the same time do to really crappy luck ) so I losy 54 clown loaches and 10 YOYO's along with a bunch of other fish.

If I could do this with 52 of them I do not see what the big deal is with 5.

As for the suggestion of the zebra loaches. Make sure you getthe right ones. There are two out there that go by that common name. One is very very aggressive and the other is not. The one you want to look for is Botia histrionica

I'm not trying to argue...just trying to get all the info out there so the OP can make their own decision. It sounds like that has happened.

I agree that you could house smaller clowns in a 75gal for quite some time...but as Jackson pointed out it takes quite a bit of maintenance and daily water changes may not be everyone's cup of tea. Daily water changes on a 75 couldn't have been fun. Unless you have a system which will do automatic water changes, I wouldn't recommend that amount of maintenance to anyone. It would be very tough to keep up with that regimen in a long term scenario. To each his own

Snails = puffer food!

'Course, a puffer won't fit in well with your current set-up.

Do ya know what kind of snails? IME, Malaysian trumpet snails are harder to get rid of with a predatory fish than regular pond snails or ramshorns. Think it may be due to their burrowing nature and tendency to go nocturnal when somehthin's feeding on 'em. Regardless, I've never had a fish that completely decimated a snail population except puffers. The minute I moved anything else out, snails showed right back up.

IIRC, Had-A-Snail is copper-based. Too much copper in a system will inhibit nitrifiers. IME, it also kills only newly hatched snails, so if yer not diligent 'bout picking out the adults, then the problem may return. I know people who swear by it, but I'm not a big fan.

I actually don't mind a few pond snails in a tank. They help keep algae and detritus clear and add very little to the bioload. Too many can be easily removed by the wafer method above. That's where a tank with a puffer or two comes in handy. If ya do remove them from a tank with a wafer, don't flush them; dispose of them in a method that keeps them away from any waterways.

WYite

Algeafix is also not reccomended for inverts. You could get a couple of assassian snails to eat the other snails and once they are all gone you could sell the assassian snails.

D~ sorry if I came across as if I wanted to agrue

I just got some great info from a bunch of people here in Canada that are snail freaks LOL. There are these snails called Anatome Helena ( Assassin Snails ) they eat other snails and do not reproduce like crazy and can be controled easily. Plus they do not eat each other as well LOL

This is how I am going to deal with my snail problem

Oops I did not see what MikeD posted sorry

Jackson wrote:

D~ sorry if I came across as if I wanted to agrue

No worries. I just wanted to make sure you weren't getting upset. Discussions like this are good for the site. There are many varying opinions on most topics and it is good to get all points of view out there. Then people who are looking for information can make up their minds for themselves.

dirtydawg10 wrote:

Jackson wrote:

D~ sorry if I came across as if I wanted to agrue

No worries. I just wanted to make sure you weren't getting upset. Discussions like this are good for the site. There are many varying opinions on most topics and it is good to get all points of view out there. Then people who are looking for information can make up their minds for themselves.

I ment argue LOL I need to look before I post LOL

I agree with you 100%

I just got my assassin snails and let me tell you guy's these things are crazy. I dropped in a few ramhorns just to see if they do what they are said to do and WOW they went to town on them. The container I have them in had snails blood all over the bottom. These are for sure the best way to get rid of other snails

I will post pic's as soon as I take some.

Flubendazole kills snails and does not harm fish, plants or natural bacteria of a planted tank.

Charles Harrison
inkmkr.com/Fish/