snail problem

[[email protected]]

hello everyone,I just started my new 2 ft tank with crystal red shrimp and plants in it,but a few days later small snails start to grow inside my tank. Please help.

[Urban Aquaria]

Looks like the snails hitchhiked in with the new plants, and you didn't pre-treat or quarantine the plants before adding them to your tank.

Since they are already in your tank, just try to manually remove as many of them that you can find to reduce their population. Many more will still be hiding amongst the plants along with their eggs, so it'll be a constant process. Try not to overfeed as the pest snails will end up eating the excess food and lay even more eggs.

An additional option is to add in a few assassin snails to hunt the pest snails and help control their population. Some people may also recommend adding dwarf puffers but they will also hunt and eat your shrimps too, so it not such a good idea.

[antjoey1122]

Assassin snails are great helper in controlling snail outbreak, I had this experience and swear by their usefulness.

I tried dwarf puffer, but they began to be nuisance by nipping on my guppies tails and some even having shock until they died. (Bad experience with the puffer)
As mentioned by Urban Aquaria, one more method is to manually catch them, and I actually crush them and feed to the fish.