how to disinfection plants and get rid of snails?

[nick_tks]

Dear brothers out there. I understand that the growth of snails are due to aquantic plants and the plants must be properly disinfection before they can be put into the tank. Any advises on how to actually disinfection the plants? My tank is also infested with snails and although i tried to pluck them out everyday, but their no never seem to decrease. I'm having 6 cardinal tetras and a dozen of fire red shrimps in my 1.5ft tank. Is there any ways to get rid of the snails besides using of puffer fish? (Heard that puffer fish might attack my shrimps and cardinal, thats why i've been pondering over on to get it or not) Any advises? thanks

[Wolfgangs246]

IMO, snail infestations means that you are overfeeding. So I think your best bet is to try reducing the amount of food that you feed your tank. Logic is that in a direct fight over food, snails would lose to shrimp and fish so eventually that would starve them out of the tank.

You could introduce predators for your snails but anything that eats snails would threaten your shrimp as well. Personally I think the best way to get rid of them is to systematically starve them out and do occasional 'purges' to remove the largest snails that you can find as they are prime candidates for laying more eggs. Personally I just crush their shells and leave them to be eaten by the shrimp.

When you read about the plants needing to be disinfected, I think you were reading some advice about placing plants in a medicine bath to kill any snails eggs and other parasites that might be introduced to your tank. Whatever medication that was, you couldn't do that to an entire tank cause putting the medication into your tank would also kill your shrimp. If you didn't mind taking out every plant and decoration and putting it through the bath, you might be able to eliminate some of the snail eggs though.

Hope that helps.

[nick_tks]

hey Wolfgangs246, thanks alot for your valuable advise.... guess i've got to lower the amount of food that i'm giving the fishes and shrimps... thanks alot... hopefully i can get rid of the snails soon

[beetroot]

I think some people would say soak plants in salt water or very diluted bleach before letting them enter your tank, please correct me if i'm wrong.

I'm also having snail problems *pull hair, pull hair* arggh... as i didn't "disinfect" the plants that i got.. but the thing is, i used to have a lot of pond snails before, and was picking them up one by one everyday. Then, i bought some moss from someone and got introduced to another pest snail that's round, and looks like tiny little ramshorn snails - but these won't grow big. Now my tank has loads of these tiny round ramshorn-like snails; they are even smaller than the pond snails. And surprisingly, i don't see the pond snails anymore - have the smaller pests overtaken the larger pests? But still pests!! So i just try to siphon out as many as possible....

[Wolfgangs246]

Sadly I am not familiar with the wide variety of snails that can infest a tank. I hope I never do.

But at this point I don't think you can eliminate the pests completely. Your best option is to reduce the food and let the shrimp and snails squabble over algae and whatever food you put in. Don't forget that shrimp and snails are both scavengers so they aren't used to a regular food sources anyway. It's better to under feed rather than over feed.

So if you cut down on the feeding amount, over the course of 1-2 months, you should see a drop in snail population. Coupled with a regular killing or removal of the larger snails, you should soon have a much nicer looking tank.

You could try using various 'snail traps' which lure snails into containers with food but then trap them for easy disposal. I've tried one before but it wasn't very effective.

[beetroot]

Haha... i hope you never do too. Headache!
I also thought the worst was the pond snails. Then I had this other round kind. At least with the pond snails, you could perhaps try to lure them with a trap as I've seen them feeding on my dead shrimp. But this round kind... not sure if they are pure vegetarians... have never seen them feeding on a dead shrimp. And they are so tiny and delicate... sigh...

Good luck to us... haha!

[nick_tks]

Dear brothers,

I've tried using anti snails solutions as recommended by a guy working in qian hu. Sadly, almost all my shrimps perish. My cardinal tetras can still take it and so far no casualty, but i lost quite a no of shrimps. Afer i found out my shrimps are dying, i tried to do a 50% water change and managed to save the remaining few of them. Worse, after the water change, the snails came back. Sigh.....No matter what, please don't try to use solution as shrimps are more sensitive. I tried using the solution as its resommended that the solution will not harm plants, shrimps and fishes... True in fishes are not harm, but certain plants n shrimps perish. maybe you guys can take this into consideration. Maybe we still got to use the primitive method in using either puffer or starve the snails...

[beetroot]

Shrimps are of course more sensitive. When you have shrimps, you can't just anyhow put in medication ...
A puffer may whack your shrimps too.

[eugene_syh]

Dear brothers,

I've tried using anti snails solutions as recommended by a guy working in qian hu. Sadly, almost all my shrimps perish. My cardinal tetras can still take it and so far no casualty, but i lost quite a no of shrimps. Afer i found out my shrimps are dying, i tried to do a 50% water change and managed to save the remaining few of them. Worse, after the water change, the snails came back. Sigh.....No matter what, please don't try to use solution as shrimps are more sensitive. I tried using the solution as its resommended that the solution will not harm plants, shrimps and fishes... True in fishes are not harm, but certain plants n shrimps perish. maybe you guys can take this into consideration. Maybe we still got to use the primitive method in using either puffer or starve the snails...

what i did was to to prepare a pail of water with the anti-snail solution, i'll take out my plants(moss tied on rock and moss wall) soak it in the pail, after a while u'll see knocked out snails at the bottom. after which i'll rinse the plants and place them back into the tank. not 100% effective, but it reduces the number.

[Wolfgangs246]

Sorry to hear of your losses Nick_tks.

The key thing to remember is that both Shrimp and Snails are crustaceans. As such, any medication that might prove harmful to a snail will probably be equally harmful to a shrimp. In fact your medication will probably effect shrimp more because of the selective breeding they had to go through to achieve their unique colors, this would make them more susceptible to poisons or disease.

Thats why I'm always super careful when medicating my tanks. Some medication meant for killing parasites will also affect your shrimp negatively. So read your medication instructions carefully!!!! They will definitely include a disclaimer if the medication might kill invertebrates.

Sorry that you couldn't save your shrimps.

[Navanod]

Anti snails medications are almost exclusively copper based, which kills all invertebrates (snails, shrimps, worms etc) and some plants. Only useful for tanks with only large fishes IMHO.
I use potassium permanganate baths for pretreating plants. More to kill algaes but so far, no snails, planaria or hydra have made it through this defence either (but the algaes did )

Puffers and loaches sold as "snail eaters" will first wipe out your shrimps

Try restricting feeding and get some Assassin snails (Helenas). I once experimented in a nano tank that i purposely infested with pond and button snails. A father and son team of assassins decimated the pest snails in a month and the tank was free of live pest soon after. Just alot of empty shells, hehe

Of course, if you continue to overfeed, the assassins would prefer to eat shrimp food than hunt, so your milage may vary.
Assassins are harmless to shrimps unless the shrimps are sick or trapped under a mesh or plant and cannot escape. Assassins are very good at cleaning up dead bodies too, so don't be surprise to see them sucking on a shrimp as they digest the shrimps by injecting digestive juice under the shell and sucking the soup out.
Anything that dies in a tank with assassins quickly turns to skeleton or shell...its strange to see an empty and intact shrimp shell with colors (completely not like the molted shell). Keeps the tank clean

[sthh]

I have 2 tanks with those tiny ramshorn type snails. Impossible to get rid of them. I just occassionally net out some of those that are climbling up the glass of the tank. However, when my fire red shrimp in one tank multiplied by the hundreds, most of the snails are gone, as the shrimp ate everything in it's path, leaving little for the slow snails. In the other tank, it's a different story. My Sulawesi shrimps do not multiply as fast, and the snails love the high ph, which is good for shell creation. I have to really watch the amount of food I leave in the tank. Forget about using chemical, you would have to rinse your tank to get rid of the residue.

[beetroot]

Yeah... an eyesore, isn't it? But at least the tiny ramshorn-type looks better than the pond snails .

Navanod, is your "button" snail what we are talking about it? I've heard about assassins but never tried them. Are they always on the "ground" (the impression i get) or do they climb tank walls/wood/rocks too? Because the tiny ramshorn-type snails are always on tank walls, moss & leaves.

[Navanod]

Yeah... an eyesore, isn't it? But at least the tiny ramshorn-type looks better than the pond snails .

Navanod, is your "button" snail what we are talking about it? I've heard about assassins but never tried them. Are they always on the "ground" (the impression i get) or do they climb tank walls/wood/rocks too? Because the tiny ramshorn-type snails are always on tank walls, moss & leaves.

Yes, those "button" looks like tiny ramhorns, except that they hardly grew to that size (or maybe because they always die before they can grow that big )
The assassins can certainly climb very well and they move much faster than normal snails. Unless the tiny snails hide on leaves that are too small to allow the assassins to climb, the assassins will eventually get them. Of course, that's why I deployed a father and son team of assassins...the baby is quite tiny too

[Wolfgangs246]

Whoa cool. I learnt something new!

Navanod, do assassin snails go through the same high rate of breeding as those pest snails? I'm curious to understand how assassin snails don't end up like the pests they prey upon.

[Navanod]

Whoa cool. I learnt something new!

Navanod, do assassin snails go through the same high rate of breeding as those pest snails? I'm curious to understand how assassin snails don't end up like the pests they prey upon.

They certainly do not overbreed and overrun the tank like pest snails. IMHO, why that is so is because:

1. They need to mate in order to breed.
2. They lay very few eggs, one at a time.
3. Most eggs do not hatch or take very long to hatch. Some people dislike that as they find the eggs unsightly
4. They grow much slower than pond snails and other pests.
5. I'm not sure, but I think they require "fresh meat" in their diet in order to breed successfully, so the usual leftover food and overfeeding doesn't actually cause them to multiple. However, when something dies, and I see them sucking it dry, I get babies in a few weeks time...

I'm feeding them sinking crab pellets now since there's no snails for them to eat...they mostly left my horned nerites alone as they prefer to eat snails without operculum (its a trap door like hard cover they cover the shell with when they retract into it)

[Wolfgangs246]

Thats very interesting. Would you happen to know where I could buy these kind of snails? Sounds like there isn't a downside to getting 1-2 of these in a tank.

[Navanod]

You can periodically find them at C328, Y618, Biotope, Midori & Colorful. Other places probably too but I don't visit them as often. Price is normally less than a purple note

[nick_tks]

the down side of these snails are that they normally leave the shells of the pest behind... unlike puffer who will finish everything... but puffer might 'disturb' other fishes or even your shrimps... pros and cons ar

[dannyfish]

once i tried put some dono wat snail name into my tank and they will not able to survivie long enough...
soon i will see their empty shell at the bottom of the tank.......
even when those plant i buy from LFS which got some snails on it...they will not able to survive long enough..
my fish is only red cherry & some cory.....
thinking whether is it my low pH that causes them to disappear haha ...
any 1 can advise