Snail Problem

[ziggy2]

My discus tank is planted and is becoming overrun with snails. How can I get rid of them?

 

[skiptomyzoo]

You could try clown loaches, although that is up to you, as its a 50/50 split on whethere or not clowns are too skittish and therefore scare discus or not. If you do, i would go with smaller ones in a group.

 

[Alistriwen]

Assuming you don't want to take out your plants, de-egg them I'd reccomend doing lots of water changes where you suction the gravel. This takes out the small babies. The larger ones you can pick out and you can also put a piece of cucumber or something in the tank to attract the larger ones and then throw that in the trash. I know some copper treatments work as well but they can harm your fish and plants. I found the best method to keep the population very low was to do the gravel cleaning and manually remove as many as I could. Got rid of a pond snail population that way and inadvertently kept my ramshorn population lower than I wanted that way too .

 

[importracer]

CLean(vacuum) your gravel well....Do a 50% water change thereafter....Also....Check the filter's media for any clear, jelly like blobs of eggs....You may ask, "how might they look like"....Trust me, you will notice them right away.....Pull, scrape, wipe off, whatever makes you feel comfortable, the egg masses.....ALso....A fun way of ridding snails is purchasing a group of 5 or so Dwarf Puppers....Really cute puffies that are really small, really really small.....Any store should sell these...They go for $2-5 each.....

 

[ziggy2]

I'm going to drop some cucumbers in tonight. I did a waterchange last night and will do another one tonight. I have sand substrate so it is hard to clean.

 

[Ianab]

If clown loaches are too big you could get some smaller species. Zebra or Yoyo loaches only grow 4-6" max. They are cool little fish even if you dont have snails, but they would have a ball sifting through your sand looking for snails

By removing the big snails and letting the loaches take care of the small ones and eggs you can keep them under control pretty easy.

Cheers

Ian

 

[ziggy2]

Thanks Mate

 

[Mylek]

Get some dwarf puffers -easy and they are really funny Chemicals and large, full scale cleanups (sand, filter, plants etc) often does more harm then good.

I got a coupple of dwarf puffers in my discus tank and they really like it there.

 

[guppy]

Botia sidthimunki is also a great snail eater and it only gets 2 1/2" long, best kept in groups of 5 or more, these attractive little loaches make short work of juvenile snails and like the soft, acidic water conditions that are good for discus.

 

[muckieman]

get a birch i ahd one and i didn't have to feed it because it ate the snails or puffers (darwf).