Snails issues

twoinchina

Hello and thank you in advance for all the advice you can offer.

here's the situation: we bought a used tank, and it turns out that there were snails in it. We found them in our new canister filter when cleaning it, apparently they migrated there.

We never heard of snail issues before and figured the snails would do a good job cleaning our smallest 5 gallon tank which has a slight algae problem from time to time.

But the smails happened to multiply so fast that now it seems like there are hundreds in there!

We bought some snail removing chemical for fish tanks, but we don't know how it might affect the fish or bacterial balance in the tank.

Are snails bad for a tank? Is there a way to maybe reduce light or raise temperature or something so that they would stop multiplying?

Thank you

Lupin

Abundant food supply is often the main cause for snail population explosion. Limit the food supply and remove as many snails you see as you can. Do not resort to chemicals as they may cause adverse effects even on the fish. Dead snails not detected and removed immediately can cause increasing ammonia levels thus fouling up the water and even killing all your fish.

Unrulyevil

you can also fight snails with fish! Just get pair of snail eating fish.


ref to this link

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaver...snail_faq.html

Lupin

I would not suggest adding any more fish if there are some in the tank already. The tank is only five gallons which is too small for more. The link has a list of fish but none of the fish listed even fit a 5 gallons. I don't think bettas eat snails quite enthusiastically. You can only rely on luck but chances are it won't eat them. There is no need to use a fish anyway as a means to kill all snails.

Mating Slinkys

Ive heard a good way to get snails out of the tank is to use lettuce, obviously reduce the feeding i that is a problem, but put a chunk of lettuce in there and wait for all the snails to wander over for a free lunch. then remove the lettuce when they are all on board. Repeat as needed to ruuce the population and then make sure you keep on top of any overfeeding issues to avoid a recurrence.

I've not used this method myself, as i so far have been lucky with snails, but i've been told it's effective and easier than chasing loads of induvidual ones around the tank!

Hope that helps!

Unrulyevil

the problem with snails is that no matter how many will crawl out on the lettuce the eggs are still in the tank (glass, plants, gravel) so.... just do your research and fight nature with nature. And no No bettas.

DarkDave

It seems to be the easiest thing would be to clean out the 5 gallon tank as best you can and attempt to remove as many snails as possible. You will need to clean off your decorations and plants too. I'd just dump out most of the water and replace it. Just leave enough water at the bottom to cover the gravel.