Explosion of ramshorn snails
 

Well This morning awoke to yet another explosion of ramshorn snails in my 29G. I had this happen once before and manually picked out most all of them. Must have missed some or they laid eggs before I could rid them. Anyway, I am wondering what can help keep the population under control? Is it that I might be overfeeding and that is why it exploded again or? I've head of loaches but really hadn't planned on adding a loach. I do however plan to add a pair of GBR's. I've heard they might eat baby snails??



Also, say hello to Mr. Gold Nugget! ;)

a clown loach will clean out all the snails, but if you have shrimp expect the clown loach to eat all those also.

but yes if you have a growing population of snails then there must be plenty for them to eat.

No.. Everybody needs to stop suggesting adding fish and stuff to take care of problems that have a root with our habits.

If you have snails you like, an assassin snail is out of the question as well.

You have an issue with how much you feed.

Depending on how many shrimp you have, you may not need to feed nearly as much as you do.

See with ramshorns, you can use them as great markers of how much you feed.

Feed too much, you'll see explosions of them.

Feed too little, a die off.

Feed just right? They'll get a few to survive to adulthood.

I fall into the "afraid they'll out compete" my shrimp trap.

I used to have a semi explosion of them. What I did was add a big piece of food every 3 days..all the shrimp & snails would gather around it & from there I would manually remove them.

THIS!!!!

In my fish tanks, I tend to overfeed as they are heavily planted so the fish have a harder time finding the food and the extra food basically becomes my macro dosing. lol. They have lots of snails. My shrimp tanks, I don't feed nearly as generously and they have far fewer snails.

Ramshorn especially seem to breed when they eat lots, they don't eat, they don't breed and it seems to be a pretty consistent rate at which they do vs food, so it's a great gauge on your feeding.

I've been trying to develop a line of Blue Ramshorns and Red/Gold Ramshorns (different tanks). I find the best way to control them is to try to breed them. Seems like when you want baby snails it just don't happen. :hihi:

When you have to many put an algae wafer in a fish net and leave it the tank over night. In the morning remove the net full of snails. Return the ones you want back to the tank. Really just that easy.

I don't have the patience for a full blue line, but I'm working on a red line :)

But yep. GeTo has it right

Thanks for the replies! I am pretty sure it exploded because I was overfeeding. I will cut down on my feeding and manually rid them one more time. Didn't want to go the loach route but might get a couple assassins..

I prefer my Red/Golds. I think the Blues look better under the LEDs in my 40.

Interesting observation.. I love all types of ramshorns. I'll buy a blue line eventually. I just won't breed them Lolz. All my breeding kinda halted because my crayfish seek out and eat ramshorns. >_>

Really? I do, though I added a pink to my tank and a brown snuck in there. Shouldn't make an impact on the gene pool, though.

Red rams sound cool though.

ramshorn snails can be a menace as they are prone to dying off for no good reason. I would suggest an assassin snail. Certainly not any chemical treatments with shrimp also present in your tank.