What fish compatible with guppies will eat pond snails in a 5 gal. tank? Needs to be a small fish.?

Question

I just have 2 guppies, male and female. They have so far eaten any fry and seem to be very happy in the 5 gallon tank. But the pond snails are taking over! I've reassembled the cleaned the tank twice, which took care of the larger snails, but now all the babies are out.

Answer 1

Try this instead.
Get some lettuce. Romaine works best, but any kind is fine. Put it into the tank and weight it down with something. Wait 30 minutes, and pull the lettuce out with the snails all over it. Put the snail covered lettuce down the garbage disposal. If you don't have one, cover all the snails in salt. You want them dead before you put them into the trash, so they don't get into your local ecosystem.
Repeat until you can't see any more snails. Then repeat again a few days later. Then again once a week just to be sure you got them all.
Good Luck

Answer 2

Wow, good question! I am thinking there are two ways to do this... either get a small gold fish that will eat the snail eggs that they lay on anything they can find...OR, do it the right way and get all the fish into another tank; boil the gravel, throw out the plants if they're real because snails naturally will lay eggs on those first so the babies have food...

Truly, The only sure-fire way to get rid of the snails is to start a new tank set up and let everything in the old tank including every part, filter, hose, thermometer.. everything! and let it totally dry out, maybe two months.

Your other choice is to add a "cure" called snail rid or OUT or something like that... but be advised, that if you use this the snails will die and REALLY POLLUTE the tank! You will have to do a water change every three or so days or tail rot, fungus, Lord alone knows WHAT else will affect the tank, chemicals do strange things to the gravel too... Whatever you do... do it carefully and slowly. I'd store up some water and let it age at least a day if its tap water so the chlorine can evaporate.. Then drain off a half tank of the water and replace it slowly so it doesnt frighten the fish too much...

Snails are very hard to get completely gone because they will creep around under the gravel and hang onto the tiniest places in the corners of the tank, the grooves inside filters... they'll eat the algae off airstones... lay eggs on the stones.. you're going to have to get REAL serious and dilligent.. it could take a couple of months if you dont move the fish into a clean tank... I wish i had better news...

Answer 3

The only fish that eats snails and is ok for a 5 gallon is a dwarf puffer. But, since there's already fish in it, and it won't be very compatible with the guppies, I'd say there's none.

Float a piece of lettuce in the tank. The snails will love it, and soon they'll all attach to it to eat. Remove it, and keep doing it till there's no more snails.

Answer 4

Try the following:

1. Use some snail control solution in your tank, e.g. Copper Safe, Sera Snail Control, Tetra Snail Control, etc. Buy it from your pet shop or aquarium dealer.

2. Get Bronze Corydoras. It's just 2-7 cm bottom feeder fish which scrapes off algae, left-over food, and even snails. It doesn't harm guppies.

3. Get Clown Loach. The young is only 4-5 cm. It feeds on snails and doesn't harm guppies.

4. Get a lettuce, allow snails to crawl over it, then discard the lettuce with all your snails!

5. Remove your guppies, then add salt solution to your aquarium water. Allow it to settle for 24 hours. Then remove all water and gravel. Clean all your gravel, replace your water, then put back your guppies.

6. Get a Paradise Fish or Pearl Gourami. They eat snails. But be wary because they nip the tail of guppies and may even harass guppies to death.

Best of luck!

Answer 5

What Eats Pond Snails

Answer 6

A dwarf puffer might work, but they need a bit of salt in their water. The salt will also be good for the guppies, they like a bit of salt in their water, too. Not table salt, but aquarium salt. That's very important, don't put table salt in your tank.
Putting a bit of salt in the water will also kill off or weaken the snails, which is bad. Then they'll just die and foul the water and kill your fish.
If you had a bigger tank I'd say get a clown loach, or even one of those fiddler crabs that are always at petsmart. Either of those would work, but not in your tank.

Answer 7

Any snail eater will start eating your guppies once the snails are gone! The lettuce trick will help to keep the number of snails down but will never eliminate the problem (and may introduce new eggs to the tank)..

The only way to get rid of all the snails is (as others have said) is to clean the tank of all snails and eggs. Before you totally tear the tank down you can try my method that I've used successfully.

Start by removing *all* decorations, live plants etc from the tank (leave only guppies, water and gravel). Toss the live plants! Scrub all plastic plants and other decorations with a bleach solution (and I do mean scrub!) and then allow to soak for an hour in the solution (1 cup bleach to 1 gallon water), Rinse the stuff with clear water and leave out of the tank until no new snails for two weeks.

For the tank add new shiny pennies to the gravel (1 per gallon) or use either "Had a snail" per package directions or Jungle labs "Parasite Clear" tabs at double dose. Scrub the tank walls to break up any egg clusters (clear slimy goo) and get them into the 'poisoned' water (your guppies will be fine-just poison to the snail eggs).

Take off all tank attachments (light, cover, heater, filter etc) and clean them with bleach water like you did with the decorations paying extra attention to areas that were under the cover and not covered by water (just don't get water into the light bulb socket). After rinsing with clear water rinse again using water treated with a double dose of chlorine killer like "AquaSafe", dry and return to the tank. If you have a 'bio-wheel' filter don't bleach the wheel itself just rinse with plain tap water and keep damp until the filter can go back to the tank (I've never had snails eggs 'infect' the wheel).

Use a small net to catch every snail you can get and flush 'em. Getting living ones stops new eggs and getting dead ones helps with nitrogen levels (but you will still have some 'bloom'). Be sure to sanitize your net after snail snagging (Oh yeah; sanitize your tank scrubber also).

With as small a tank (and guppy population) as you have this is probably overkill for your situation but once you get to bigger tanks this is the way to go! The important thing is to get all the eggs to break the cycle of new snails (and they *don't* need to mate-one snail by itself can have hundreds of clone babies).
I no longer give my guppies 'raw' veggies as I know that I've gotten snails from fresh lettuce and spinach along with orange slices in a goldfish tank. When you get live plants give them a heavy tap water rinse along with a bleach or alum dip to remove/kill any eggs that may be present (yes you may lose a plant but that's better than snails!). One other thing is that I have seen snails kill fry and adults before- that's why I'm so anti-snail (I lost a video of this happening in a harddrive crash).

Finally here's a link for more guppy care information!

Answer 8

hmm. I'll have to try the lettuce thing.
Loaches eat snails but i wouldn't recomment for a 5 gallon tank. They're fun to watch too.

Answer 9

Buy a new tank, gravel, bottom filter, rocks, and plastic plants. Snails are next to impossible to eradicate.

Answer 10

Zebras , neons and algae eaters.