Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and so much more from users like brunofin.
They came as eggs with plants I bought months ago. I honestly don't have a problem with them but over the week their population EXPLODED. They are everywhere and covering almost the entire floor. I understand I may need to get rid of them but they are still are live beings and I dont want to be inhuman. How do I get rid of them?
Loaches, hands down!! They are not expensive, have interesting/active personalities, and completely ate all my snails. They have decent patterns too. Could just get 2, assuming tank can handle more biomass.
In my experience the easiest way is to use a snail trap like the "Sera Snail Collect" which worked very well for me. Also just removing some every day by hand works but is slow progress.
Overfeeding the fish might be the cause for the population increase.
You don't really want to use a treatment as then you'll be left with dead and decaying snails in the tank.
Honestly I just threw them in to the garden. You could remove them from the tank and then use a snail treatment, freeze them or use them as food for a loach or puffer.
I have snails in my shrimp tank and they can be controlled but also they can really take over so make sure you deal with them either way.
I have a similar problem with common snails. I've heard a $1-3 Assasin snail is the way to go. They only eat other snails, and won't breed in your tanks. (If alone)
I got a snail trap but I didn't have the heart to use it. I definitely was overfeeding so I adjusted the amount of food I'm giving to keep them under control instead.
One thing that I noticed though is that before them, I also had quite a bad algae problem on the glass and plants, now the aquarium is crystal clear, I believe they are keeping the algae in check too.
Having that said, I guess as long as don't overfeed, they are beneficial to the aquarium.
That's good! An Otto catfish can also help keep your glass and plants clean. I got an assassin snail as I had a similar problem (mine were eating the algae my fish need, and eating my plants. The snail is keeping my tank safe :)
I've also adjusted food, just so that the bad snails can't get any supplemental food. They seem to have an exponential growth rate otherwise...