What eats pest snails?

sterling1

sterling1

AC Members
Aug 10, 2010
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AND SHI!
I have recently been over run with snails...Both physa and Ramshorns.I bought ASSASSIN SNAILS AND THEY CAN"T KEEP UP! LOL

I considered A GSP but after reading...I am not prepared to go to brakish or salt tanks...:help: I do have an empty (Except for snails) 10 for QT...but even that would be too tiny for a puffer...

The other tanks after QT ARE 29 and 55s
I have platies,guppies and ABN plecos.

So, any suggestions on a fish or invert etc. that will go ape eating snails and live in slightly acidic water?

Thanks!
Diane
 
It's been months...I literally dumped around 10 assassins in each tank. I see a few empty shells and catch an occasional glimpse of an assassin...but this is out of hand....I hate to just smash them...But they have literally over run and ruined one of my apple snail tanks already...
 
Feed less, clean more.

Pest snails reproduce out of hand when there is an abundance of food.
 
Feed less = pest snails eat my plants...I raise apple snails and my tanks are cleaned regularly...They have more than double the required filtration too. There are tanks where I have to feed more just to make sure the ABNs can actually get to the food...So you see I cut down on the food it is the baby plecos and that don't get enough to eat not the snails...Still looking for suggestions and reading. Am thinking maybe yoyo loaches...
OrionGirl said:
Feed less, clean more.

Pest snails reproduce out of hand when there is an abundance of food.
Click to expand...
 
Adding stock to take care of a maintenance issue is never a good idea. Do more gravel vacs and if the snails are reproducing that much then yes you are feeding too much. If there is enough leftover food for the snails to reproduce out of control then the other critters are getting their fill and leaving the rest for the snails. I agree with OrionGirl feed less and gravel vac more and you will see the population start to come down. BTW assassin snails are funny with their breeding, on e day you will see none and the next day you will be over ran with them.
 
Gravel gets vac twice a week water changes the same...not enough for tanks that are not by any means over stocked? Not being a smart a$$ just asking.
 
If the snails are finding enough to eat to support a huge population, then yes, there is more food than the fish can/will consume. I'm not saying the tanks aren't clean or have high nitrates, just that there has to be more food than the fish need in order to support an overload of snails.
 
Unless I VAC them up ...UGH...My tanks are mostly geared towards raising snails...I sell them.
So it is hard to make tanks so they are not "SNAIL FRIENDLY" and still have nice apple snails.

But the deal with one tank is they have literally over run the apple snails...I cut back on food etc the apple snails end up dying not the ramshorns and pests. I have a 55 that used to have Blue MM Platies and BEAUTIFUL apple snails. Ramshorns started to take over. I removed adult apple snails as they were getting beaten out by the others.
That tank is my main concern...
 
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