Snails! How do I get rid of them?

So obviously the snails I am referring to are the unwanted ones that come from live pet store plants. Every time I bring plants home from the store I rinse them with water, take the cotton like substance out and separate the roots. I do this specifically to avoid these snails. After years of doing this I suddenly have a snail outbreak! I have stupidly tried to hand pick them out with my aquarium tweezers but this is not sufficient and their eggs are almost impossible to find. How do I get rid of them? They reproduce like crazy...

 

what type ? take pics then we can see how to help

later Ferdie

 

Assassin snails

 

lol - hammer and nail .. sure

 

I have no idea what kind of snails they are! I know nothing about snails. I didn't manage to find any at the moment but I have found a picture on the internet that looks like mine. The biggest I've seen them grow is to the size on the persons hand. They are very small and brown in colour.

 

Must be

 

argggg pond snails ... they are the worst no good for your tank ..

 

Really? I had them in my previous tank too... from plants.

 

What are the best snails for assassins nutrition?

 

Get either a snail trap or if you have some letters .. clip a leaf to the side tonight and remove the snails tomorrow.

Slow snails .. no really I have seen a rams horn out crawl and assassin.

Later Ferdie

 

and pond snails?

@Deone - where you located? I don't mind taking some off your hands...

 

Zebra loach and Ghost Knife fish. Not the latter if you've got a small tank. I feed them crushed pond snail every other day and two live snails once a week and they chow them up like crazy.

 

Copper sulphate will work - found in most algaecides or pharmacies. But it will also kill any inverts in your tank as well as produce an ammonia spike from the decaying snails.

 

Heard lettuce in a trap works quite well. Remove lettuce the next morning

 

Why no good for the tank? I also have loads of these, together with Malaysian Trumpets and some other little round jobs and they don't seem to do any damage. Also, there is very little algae.

 

Little round jobbies. they grow to about the size of a small fingernail.




Malaysian Trumpets on the left and some other thing on the right. The one on the right has a similar shape but much darker and is smaller.

 

They tend to get more into your equipment. Esp HOB's ... then it all comes crashing down.

Later Ferdie

 

I have found a natural way to get rid of these things without killing them all at once and ruining the water. Just make sure your fish and other animals and plants can take it. You start dropping your tds slowly till you start seeing the shells go white. They will die one by one over the next few months as they can't build their shells anymore. They also stop reproducing. You leave the shells in the tank to act as buffer on demand when the low tds makes the ph slip down.

 

To me Assassin Snails are still the best pest snail fighters.

 

I would be a bit wary of messing with the water parameters. IMO it is a potential disaster waiting to happen unless you are supremely sure of what you are doing. Assassins probably easiest and safest bet so have to agree with Pezulu