snails snails everywhere!

[TKOS]

I have snails in all my tanks. And they are all planted and I have no major snail problems. Yes, there are plenty of snails but they do not hurt my plants to any major degree. My betta tank had to snail I purposely placed in there. One died during an unfortunate gravel vacuum incident. The other is growing nicely. But since I feed my betta a small amount of food once a day there are no other snails. I even have a snail tank that I used to keep for dwarf puffers till they all dies. I feed then veggies once a week, yet they do not touch the live plants and they have no exploded in population.

Snails genrally lay their eggs on plants IME, and this may also be why you see them so often on plants. Not necessarily eating them. The ones on my plants surprisingly rarely damage any of the leaves.

 

[carpguy]

Its never a bad thing to try to address the root causes. If your heavily overfeeding you maybe setting yourself up for other less obvious problems.

But if you want a snailkiller, I'll vouch for some of the smaller botia loaches. My crypt bowl (no fish, no food) supports a half dozen or so snails. I've never seen a single one in my 30g, and while I'm not really a heavy hand I'm sure I could feed less and not lose anyone. 4 skunk loaches and a b. histrionica. All no more than 3 inches, top out at maybe 4.

 

[SnakeIce]

you are forgetting one reason the snails will explode in pop.
if you have plants and they are not doing the optimum you can have none of the fish related reasons and still have lots of snails

 

[TKOS]

Yes. Snail are opportunistic creatures. Eating healthy plants is a lot more work than eating one that is decaying or in the process of dieing.

 

[carpguy]

I like the little fellers in the crypt bowl… they keep it tidy and their numbers stay small. My point was more that snails can exist in a tank thats not being massively overfed or mismanaged.

"Hundreds of them… even though we are flushing many everyday" kind of suggests that there's a good bit nutrients in there going unused by the intentional population, but I can see how a good number could reside in any tank.

Comparing the bowl to the tank, I'd guess it could support several dozen just on the ordinary mulm and plant debris. Never see 'em… must be the loach patrol.