2 ?'s someone might beable to answer.

[WyldFya]

look carefully at your plants and scrape off any clutches of snail eggs you can see. they're not that hard to find.

Only if he has snails that lay eggs...

 

[WyldFya]

I thought clown loach were bad for planted tanks?

Not at all, they can be hard on some plants, but with the right setup, they won't be able to do enough to keep the plants from still growing like mad.

 

[WyldFya]

Another way to kill the algae is to do an Excel solution dip. Soak the plant for 3 minutes in a 10:1 solution of Water:Excel, then place back into the tank without rinsing. Some plants don't mind their roots being dipped, but plants like swords don't. It kills them. So for swords, you only soak the leaves. Leave the roots out of the solution.

This also works great on java moss. If the moss is suffering due to too much algae, this approach works well. I did it on mine in my 26G, and have not had algae since. I corrected the algae problem (in my case it was too much light with no CO2, so I reduced lighting), did the Excel dip, and the algae just melted away in a few days.

Edit:
Not to be done on plants that do not like Excel, like anacharis and vals.

There is also a plain excel dosing of the entire aquarium, or bleach solution dips. Excel doses on the entire aquarium can be better for the plants IF you keep the levels low enough for even the plants that don't like it.

 

[fester]

thanks!

 

[ThePBM]

Only if he has snails that lay eggs...

All snails lay eggs aside from the MTS and it didn't sound like those were his problem. i'm not even sure if MTS stow away on plants.

 

[WyldFya]

MTS stow away on plants all the time, and do not lay eggs. There are also, several types that lay extremely small clutches that are very hard to see.

 

[MarlboroMan]

So how do you get rid of snails?

 

[Fish Etc]

try to get an 8 figure puffer and problem solve

 

[donaldastwood]

A solution for getting rid of snails that i used once before was to firstly feed your fish a verry restricted diet for a day or two (Literally one or two pieces of food each)
Get a regular glass salt shaker and fill it with lettuce carrot pieces and (if you know some one with a god or have one yourself) a few pieces of dried dog food. Pack the salt shaker tight with the bits of veg etc. leaving a little space at the top. then sink the bottle in your tank close to the front and you will see the little buggers flocking towards the salt shaker within a few hours. Every 2-4 hours check the area around the shaker and use your tank net to scoop out a little of the substrate around the salt shaker also and the snails will all be inside munching their hearts out, and all you have to do is tip them out. and with the parts with substrate, simply pour boiling water into the net and throw the substrate back in. That will give your fish a nice little snack as the cooked shails sink.

On another note, because their shells are kinda soft i also used to simply squash them against the glass everytime i saw them and left their bodies on the glass... this gave my fish a nice meety addition to their diets. After a while the Tetras used to follow my hand into the tank waiting for a snail treat.

 

[ChrisGray]

first ? is before i got a uv filter i had algea really bad. now that's fixed my plants have like black hair and **** all over the leaves. how can i get rid of that.

and second. how do i get rid of snails without hurting the plants. there f'n taking over.

thanks

the best way to get rid of any black al;gae is to do 50 percent water changes at least twice a week and fill with R/O water to kill the algae

to get rid of the snails buy a couple of clown loaches they will eat all the snails and do no harm to your plant, they also look cool in planted tanks