Pest Snails?

[mstasa]

What is the best way to get rid of the pest snails that one gets when buuying plants from the pet store, without killing my Pleuroceridae snail, that i found one day in my tank. Fish?

Thanks.

 

[LoudCreature]

Prevention.

Is the snail doing damage? There are very few harmful snails.

Aside from plucking them out, it seems anything that would harm one would harm the other.

 

[aquabillpers]

I don't consider a new aquarium setup to be complete until I start seeing pond snails (physa) crawling (sliding?) around.

Bill

 

[shoggoth43]

Dip or quarantine your plants before adding them to your tank. Once they're in there's not much you can do. You might be able to pull out your "prized" snail and treat the tank with something. However, if you do that you add something nasty to the tank AND whatever you add is likely residual in a location you're going to put a snail back into at some point so you should expect that you may kill that one too.


Your best bet may be low feeding levels to keep the populations low and then throw in some blanched zucchini or similar for them to eat and just pull it out covered in the pest snails.

-
S

What is the best way to get rid of the pest snails that one gets when buuying plants from the pet store, without killing my Pleuroceridae snail, that i found one day in my tank. Fish?

Thanks.

 

[adechazal]

In my experience loaches (clown, yo yo etc.) work. They'll eat the small snails and the few that are too large for them can be plucked out. I will often see one of the loaches snacking on a small snail.

On the down side I have been finding holes in my otherwise healthy Hygrophila Corymbosa that I suspect are a result of the loaches so I've removed 5 of the 6 leaving only the smallest clown loach on snail patrol.

Aaron

 

[mstasa]

Thanks, my concern is that someting has been eating my anubias, and i also have some weird looking organisms crawling around on the class, nothing like snails. ones like a white dot with a tail, and another is just a line ( about a mm in size)

Thanks for your help

 

[Philosophos]

I know of a couple people who use potassium permanganate to sterilize their plants first. I'm looking into it my self for the next batch of plants I buy.

-Philosophos

 

[shoggoth43]

I've heard that's a good treatment although I'm having trouble locating some to use. I've also heard it's a good way to permanently color certain things so you may want to make darned sure you don't stain the silicone in your tank and use a cheap bucket instead. That, and GLOVES unless you like pink/purple hands for a couple of weeks.

-
S