We have a tropheus tank with pesty tiny snails that eat our plants. I would like to find a algae eater that would eat them without hurting the tropheus. Does this fish exist or am I jut hoping.
Looking for algae eater that will eat snails
- Thread starter wild bill
- Start date
I don't know of any algae eaters that eat snails. You can try assassin snails or a clown loach to rid your tank of snails. Then add some ancistrus catfish to take care of the algae. All will be safe with your tropheus.
We have had a clown loach in there before and he did clean up the snails but I worried it needed more protien and tropheus should'nt get much of that. The cucumber sounds like agreat idea will try that. Still would really like a snail eating algae eater though.
manual removal of the snails via the cucumber trap method, and decrease your lighting and manually remove the algae. problem solved. you don't need fish for either issue, and IMO, adding a fish to the tank to 'clean up' problems that the fishkeeper can solve is lazy.
Not trying to be lazy in fact we actually thought the tropheus would eat more algae than they do. You may have missed that there are plants in the tank and they do need light and if a person has a problem that is not lethal to the fish and they enjoy keeping all kinds of them why not use a readily avalable food source to add to your colection. there are many ways to learn about fish asking questions is one of them and seeing as algae and snails go hand in hand in nature was curious to see if there was a fish that fed on both and if there was it would help our situation and maybe add a fish to our colection.
Getting rid of pest snails is hard, if not impossible. I took three hours to carefully inspect all my media. A few days went by and didnt have any snails. Thank you........then I spotted one, took it out. Spotted one, took it out again. Repeated this process for weeks till I just gave up cuz its in a 125g. Now I have them all over but I tried. They must of laid eggs in the media. Good luck which ever route you go.
its counterintuitive to want an algae eater who eats snails. Generally, obligate herbivores that eat algae woudl not seek out a protein source like snailsnor have the proper mouth/teeth to be efficient.
As mentioned,assassin snails do a good job eating pest snails, but will reproduce as well.
Best bet is to bait/trap the pest snails, figure out the source of your excessive algae and curtail it.
As mentioned,assassin snails do a good job eating pest snails, but will reproduce as well.
Best bet is to bait/trap the pest snails, figure out the source of your excessive algae and curtail it.
I would not worry about the snails but they are eating the plants. Once the assasin snails eat the other snails will they need protien to survive or can they eat algae ans excess tropheus food. We have a bunch of bristle nose plecos we can add some of them to take care of the algae.