Shrimps and Snails

Pond snail have a population explosion when an aquarium is over fed. Slow down the amount of food you are feeding the aquarium, that is the fist part. Next is capture as many as possible. One trick is to use some sort of small bowl and put food on it, when a bunch of snails are in the bowl, remove the bowl and the snails with it. Repeat this process.

This will not get rid of them all, but if you do this 2-3 times a week, over a month the population will be greatly reduced.

Another Idea is get another aquarium that you can house dwarf puffer fish in, and use the pond snails as food for them!

I agree ~ pull back on the food and the numbers will decrease. When I first got my RCS, I thought I should feed them every day. After a few weeks, I had a gajillion snails. Cut back to feeding once every three days or so and fixed that.

The funny I only feed them twice week. There in a fully planted tank.

How much each time? And how big of a tank with how many shrimp in it?

its a 12 gal tank and there is close to 50 shrimps in there. I give them 2 small algae waffers once a week and the other time I give them a few of the crab bites. Other than that they eat the algae that grows on the plants.

dont feed the shrimp, and every morning you get up before the light goes on smash as many aqs you can. the shrimp will eat the snails and the will eventually go away.

boil a slice of cucumber, put it in the bottom of your tank with something to weigh it. you'll have plenty of snails in the morning.

I think that's still a bit much, Madfish. When I said I fed them a couple times a week, I was only feeding maybe one small algae wafer each time for about fifty shrimp in a ten gallon, and most times I'd break it in half and only feed that. Now that I have hundreds in my ten gallon I feed a couple or three algae wafers once or twice a week and that's plenty believe it or not. If I notice a lot of snails, I'll cut it back ~ if I notice few snails, I'll up it.

It really is amazing how little those guys need to eat! I felt like I was starving them when I only fed them half an algae wafer a day at first (when I only had fifty). But even then I was overfeeding. Just incredible how tough and easy to keep they are.

Hey thanks I was just thinking about making a snail trap. Im taking a pot that some plants came in and putting some algae wafer in it. Tie a string on to the pot and drop it down in the tank. Give it a few hours and then take it out I was figureing out that the shrimp that go in there will swim out when I start to lift it out but the snails dont move as fast so I can take it out and dump it and put it back in. How does that sound for a snail trap.

The kids are calling it snaily fishing like off of sponge bob square pants goes jelly fishing.

Snaily Fishing works it really works. I put my pot in there and let it sit for about a half hour and pull it up and I bet I had close to 100 snails in there. So I dumped them put it back and gave it an nother hour and the same thing close to 100 of them in there. That pot was so full I cant belive how many of them were in there.

Madfish said:

Hey there everyone on in the water world. I have a really good question. I have a few billion pond snails in my shrimp tank. How can I get rid of them with out hurting my shrimp? Im almost at the point where Im willing to try just about anything.

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How big is the tank? Perhaps a couple of Kuhli loaches might eat them? Wonder if they go after shrimp?

Kuhli loaches would eat young shrimp. They are not large enough for the bigger shrimp, but if hungry enough they may even try to kill a bigger shrimp. But certainly they would eat the smaller shrimp!

So your trap is just one of those small black plastic "net" pots? And when you put it down in the tank, is it still upright? What a cool idea! Thanks for sharing it. I'll have to save a pot next time I get one just in case. Glad you figured out a good solution!

yeah just one of them black plastic ones that plants come in. I took a two nickles and some tape and put them on the side of the pot. I then tied some string on it at the top so when you lower, or rase it up its kind of on a angle. I just put a algae waffer in there and lower it down. The nickles pull it over on its side so its easy for the shrimp and snails to go into it. Let it set down there for about a hour and then pull it up. The shrimp will swim out of it as soon as it starts to move but the snails are slow and cant get out of it. The kids are having a ball with it going fishing in the tank.

Madfish said:

The kids are having a ball with it going fishing in the tank.

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HA! Too funny.

Thanks for the extra info, Mad. I just noticed a few too many snails in one of my tanks. If cutting back the food doesn't help, I'll be trying out your idea.:thumbsup:

Best of luck with your fishing for snails..

Madfish said:

Best of luck with your fishing for snails..

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Wouldn't that be snailing?

No we aren't going sailing in our fish tank, Snailing!

(A kid at school a while ago thought I sailed in my basement...:icon_roll the future of America)

-Andrew