Redoing the tank, help with snails...

[CoolhandLocke]

I know this has been asked a billion times, but I've got a serious snail issue and here's what I'm thinking about doing. I have a 20 gallon tank, with around 50 orange shrimp, maybe 4 tigers, few cories, and lots of moss.

I figure the easiest and most sure fire way of killing them all is to just remove all the shrimp, dump the tank, boil the cholla/wood, and quarantine the plants to pick through at a later date. Now I don't want to shock my little shrimp too much so I assume the easiest thing to do is to put them in a new tank with their old filter/sponge and a some of their old (snail free) tank water.

My second question is once I get the main tank snail free and want to transfer them back what's the safest way to do it? Should I bucket out 5 gallons of their current tank water and just pour it back in? I hope to accomplish all this in a day so they shouldn't be in the bucket for all that long. Basically I don't want to screw up their environment too much as my tanks established and they've been breeding very well over the past few months.

Also wanted to ask about the best way to clean the plants once I get them out? Is there a certain dip that's best? Dip them soak in water, what's the dealio?

Same thing for the sponge filter and HOB filter. Figure it's best to keep them as dirty as possible for bacteria so is it best to just pick through those the best I can?

Any advice would be appreciated. The snails are the bane of my existence... I really hate the little buggers lol. Probably picked 40 out in the past month and it hasn't made a dent.. new ones every day it seems.

[dougolasjr]

Instead of going all out and tearing the tank down I would first try to manually remove as many snails as possible. Then I would set a piece of zucchini/veggie and let them pile on it then remove. How much are you feeding?

[tinkerpuppet]

Assassin snails took care of my pond snail issue in no time (and I had a huge overpopulation, I liked them at first). But they didn't touch my MTS snails.

[plamski]

You have to treat everything in order to remove snails. They are in the filter too. Unfortunately if you like to kill snails you have to kill your beneficial bacteria too.
My method is 10 min dip in 10-15ml hydrogen peroxide to 1gal of water.

You can use noplanaria. It will kill all the snails i thing .It should keep bacteria alive. Ask here for more info.

[Crob5965]

I had a horrible snail problem about a month ago in a heavily planted tank.
I mean it was bad I just picked out anywhere from 20-50 daily and scraped off the egg sacks from the plants.
I originally was trying to buy some assassin snails which I still might do just to be absolutely sure but honestly if you are just dealing with a 20 gal it should be pretty easy to handle

you could also try Yoyo loaches they would help out and I haven't heard of them messing with shrimp before but I would research them more if your going that route

[drewsuf82]

Originally Posted by Crob5965

I had a horrible snail problem about a month ago in a planted tank.....

you could also try Yoyo loaches they would help out and I haven't heard of them messing with shrimp before but I would research them more if your going that route

^^ +1 yo-yos are awesome snail hunters

Although if you go this route there's a few things that you need to know:

• YoYos love tight spaces such as caves, rocks, driftwood etc… the tighter the better, they can wedge themselves in like an eel
• Get at least two of them - they are social and do best in groups of 2-6
• They do dig a bit - they do this when they're on the hunt
• They are known to frolic (sometimes knocking my plants out of the gravel)
• They leave larger snails alone - like apples, zebras, etc etc however are crazy to watch hunt pond snails
• make sure if you have tie downs that you're doing it with thread, I had a fish line incident with one a few months back that was not fun for me or the loach - on a side note they have some bite when you're trying to help them and hold them down --
• They have done OK with my tank with co2 injection, just acclimate them to it slowly
• I'm not sure if they eat ghosties, I do end up putting about a dozen or so into the tank every week - they do have the hard outside like a snail although I've never witnessed it

[CoolhandLocke]

I actually wanted to get some loaches, but read some bad things about them hunting shrimp. My tanks about as safe as you can get right now with only a few otto's and cory cats.

I also thought about assassins, but also read mixed reports on them although they seem to be safe for the most part. As they're snails though how much do they breed? I know they eat other snails, but don't want to have to hunt them down to get them out later if they breed like rabbits lol

I have no idea what kind of snails I have, but know that I've never seen any bigger than around the size of a bb. I've seen some flat ones with the swirl in the middle, but most just have circular brownish shells.

I'm going to look into the assassin's some more, but am leaning towards redoing the tank as I'm not really heavily planted. Would boiling clear the cholla? Is putting the old water back in the tank a good idea as far as keeping the bacteria in and the water the same?

[Crob5965]

from what I hear about assassins is that they pretty much focus on the small pond snails at 1st but I guess if there's nothing else to eat they'll start looking around. Honestly I'm not an expert myself, I would probably go the Loach route just because I really dont like the thought of an overpopulated Assassin snail problem either, although they do sell quite well

[Crob5965]

forgot to mention also, the lettuce & zucchini works great you could try placing it in a glass salt/pepper shaker and the snails will get trapped in there. this didn't work too well for me because I have approx 10+ ABN's in my tank that love veggies but it seems to be the most popular way to get rid of pond snails.

honestly I almost gave up on my 55Gal Dirted Tank, I'm just too cheap and I couldn't walk away from all the money I'd spent on plants so I stuck with it and now if I find 1-2 snails a day its a bad day.
Good luck and keep us posted

[tinkerpuppet]

I started with 4? assassins maybe a year or so ago? (can't really remember!). I think I might have 12 now including the juvies. They don't reproduce quickly, and are very easy to pick out and pass on to others if you don't want them.

[acitydweller]

remember a tear down requires a brand new cycle... not worth the delay IMHO...

[82nd_Airborne]

I put 2 assassins in a 20L with a bunch of pond snails and they had them eradicated within a month. As far as them being shrimp safe, mineactually died after the pond snails were gone, they never touched my cbs. I was trying to feed them algae wafers and spinach, but i guess after juicy snails they weren't interested. Incidently, I never saw any babies, so I'm guessing either the adults ate them or they never reproduced.

[wkndracer]

Originally Posted by plamski

You have to treat everything in order to remove snails. They are in the filter too. Unfortunately if you like to kill snails you have to kill your beneficial bacteria too.
My method is 10 min dip in 10-15ml hydrogen peroxide to 1gal of water.

You can use noplanaria. It will kill all the snails i thing .It should keep bacteria alive. Ask here for more info.

Another proven option is Flubendazole dosed to the water column.
Not to be confused with Fenbendazole. Flu won't harm shrimp of fish and is 100% plant safe. Know what you handle but 10% Flu dosed correctly kills a number nasty's along with all snails I have ever exposed to it.

[Crob5965]

just picked up 2 assassins from my local petco they were very reasonable I think $3
they don't seem to do much but I do see a lot of empty pond snail shells on the floor.
I still plan of picking out or squashing as many on the glass that I can and I may pick up 3-4 more if needed I'm pretty confident that they will handle the problem, I'll keep you posted as it's only been 48 hrs since I introduced them to the tank

Good luck