How to combat snails

Hi Guys.

I am having a lot of trouble with snails in my tank. My plants are really taking a knock.
I try and remove them manually but they just keep popping up!
Can anyone help me?

Thanks so long

 

Mostly what people see are their little snails eating leaves which are nearly dead.
Build a snail trap.:idea:

 

I got two clown loaches , heavily planted and had lots of snails.. now I see maybe one or two every now and then , but pretty much eradicated..

 

Hey @Henkie, An old trick you can try is some lettuce. Put it in the tank at night time just before you put the lights off. The snails should go for the lettuce during the night. In the morning you can throw out the lettuce (snails and all) and put new lettuce in at night again. This is not a quick fix method though.

Or you can get yourself some Clown loaches. They destroy snails, but they also uproot plants from time to time and they are quite expensive.

The other alternative you can try, and I left this one for last because the first two will be the safest: get some snail rid meds.

 

I use the snail kill from daro for this problem, it does the job, just watch out for a OD of the stuff as it will kill your fish and this is not save if you have any other shell type fish like crayfish of shrimps in your tank, else go for clown loaches, the one LFS by me swears by them for snail removal...

 

also zebra loaches work great. ja try and stay away from the meds that kills them. dead snail is tank = huge amonia spikes

 

Contains copper that's bad for your fish.:goodnight:

 

Zebra loachs word wonders in snail infested tanks.

 

Or you could leave them as they are there for a reason and actually help your tank.

 

Thanks for all the input guys. I will leave them for a while longer, but it seems as if my plants cannot grow faster then what they are eaten.

I am not to keen on meds, so I will try the lettuce.

 

As mentioned by @DewaldC - are you sure they are eating your healthy plants and not dying leaves? I find that I can get rid of most of them with the lettuce trick (they did seem to catch onto this though :cheesy but they will multiply like crazy if there is excess food etc lying around.

 

I reckon this java fern is pretty healthy?

 

Maybe your plant is suffering from a potassium deficiency?.

 

I had the same problem ----- http://www.tropicalaquarium.co.za/showthread.php?14119-Suspected-plant-deficiencies

 

So did you use that dsd stuff?

 

And Phakistani Loaches ( Yoyo )

 

Seachem Potassium.

 

Do you reckon if I take everything out of the tank and give it a good scrub/wash it will help as well?
But I mean like everything even the substrate

 

If you do that, you will kill off a very important part of your bio system. I wouldnt do that. I am trying the lettuce trick myself since i have MTS in my tank and they are taking over - it just seems that they dont like lettuce so I am actually looking for ways to make a snail trap.

 

I don't have any fish at the moment. The lfs does not have anything note worthy so purchase and I first want to sort out the snails anyway