My fish tank is full of snails. How can i kill them?

Question

my tropical fishtank is full of snails i didnt buy any snails myself but they just overpopulate my tank. they killed all of my fish 3 neon tetras and 3 guppies, i have only a catfish sucker left, i was thinking of putting him in another bowl while drying out my tank to kille the snails, i have already once fished all of the out but the is over 300,000 snail eggs, is drying out my tank the only solution?

Answer 1

Definately don't use any chemicals
You got them in your tank because you either purchased plants or new fish
Here is a great site that explains the vegetable bait, I would recommend going that way
http://www.fishfriend.com/articles/getting_rid_of_aquarium_snails.html

I just recemmended that to somebody yesterday, and she said that it helped immense


Hope that helps you as well
Good luck

EB

Answer 2

If I were you, take out the fish from the tank and try to drain the tank and cover the lid so that the snails can die from lack of water. Put the tank in a sunny spot to make the tank dry faster. In short, just drain the tank and put the fish in a different tank. Dry the tank in a very hot or if not a sunny spot as long as it can help dry the tank faster with a lid. Just the most important thing is to have a lid on the top of the tank so that none of the snails can survive without water. That's what I think can take away the snails in your snail-infested tank

Answer 3

First off, the only way that a tank can become infested with snails is if you're overfeeding. Fish should eat ALL of the food you drop in within a few seconds to a minute of when you feed them. If there's a bunch of it floating down and going uneaten, then the snails have a big food supply and will multiply. If there isn't any food for them, they won't. Simple as that.

Plus, I don't see how snails could have killed your fish. What usually kills fish in a snail-infested tank is poor water quality caused by the same overfeeding that's causing the snail infestation and not changing the water often enough.

To get rid of the snails, don't use chemicals, either to clean the tank or to poison just the invertebrates. Adding chemicals to the tank is very rarely the best solution to any problem. Try the veggie baiting. It really works. Something that makes it easier is to put the veggies into clean babyfood jars or small bowls, so you can lift that out without having to grab hold of the veggie itself and risk dropping snails back into the tank.

And STOP OVERFEEDING. It will work wonders, you'll see.

Good luck!

Answer 4

First off - DON'T use any chemicals. They can stain your tank and also get into the sillicon sealant which you will not be able to remove and can poison anything you later add in there.

You have got this snail infestation simply because they came on your plants. It only takes two snails to over populate your tank in one swoop..... In future, wash your plants thoroughly and remove any eggs that be seen. Shop around for a good store that isn't overstocking their plants and check before you buy.

The reason why your fish have died is not soley due to the snails though. They produce a HUGE amount of waste, and if you do not do regular water changes the toxins build up and this is actually what kills the fish.

You could buy a a Clown Loach - if your tank was big enough - to eat the snails and their eggs, they love them and it will keep the population to a minimum. The most natural way though is to thoroughly wash a piece of lettuce or cucumber and place this in your tank over night. The snails will gather on this and you simply just throw it away in the morning! It will not remove ALL of the snails but some snails in the tank are good for eating all the yuk off the bottom of the tank.

Over feeding is not the only reason why the snails have multiplied in what seems like their thousands, just simply they are rampant little so and so's and can produce a tonne of eggs in one hit time and time again. Continue to feed your fish smaller amounts (one small pinch of food is suffucient, many people make the mistake of one pinch for every fish! Just feed them enough for two minutes worth of eating and that will be adequate) and the breeding should start to slow down.

Remember to change 10% of your water each week (making sure you add something like "aqua safe" to remove the chlorine and heavy metals) , clean your gravel with a gravel cleaner every other week, and to clean your filter medium when the water flow starts to slow down (i.e it starts to get gunky). Make sure you only rinse in water from the tank and NOT tap water as this kills the good bacteria.

I hope I have been of assistance here, please feel free to email me.

Answer 5

WOW!!! I cannot imagine how you got the snails in your tank if you didn't put them there. That one is definitely puzzling for me to understand. I would think after the snails killed the first three fishes then maybe you would decide to remove them from your tank. You know that these snails are causing the problem and especially if there really is 300,000 snail eggs in yoru tank then yes it would become a overpopulation problem. There are some things you could do. One thing is it would be hard to remove 300,000 snail eggs from a tank so the logical thing would be to get a tank just for your fish and leave the snail eggs where they are. I don't think you could move your snails without killing them. If I were you I would call your local fish aquarium store and see if they would be interested in having them. Sometimes fish stores will take these kinds of things off of your hands. Some will pay you for them and others will be gladly just to take them and sell them themselves. Maybe there is a certain kind of food you should be feeding these snails and that is why they are hungry and eating your fish. Good Luck with this but I think the last thing I would do is kill them. It must be pretty educating and entertaining watching all of these snails in the tank grow. I am sorry to hear that you have lost so many of your fish. The best thing to do next time is not to put a snail in with the fish. SMILE

Answer 6

DON’T PUT WINDEX IN YOUR FISHTANK!!!!!!!
Bad, bad, bad, BAD IDEA!!! I’ve had a tank that some genius at the pet shop cleaned with Windex, and even though it was thoroughly cleaned out before any fish were put it, EVERY fish I put in that tank died in under a week. I got a new tank, that came from a pet shop with staff smart enough not to use Windex, and I haven’t lost a fish since.

Now that’s out of my system… lol.
I wouldn’t poison them. If they die in the tank, they will rot in your tank. If you have that many snails, chances are you’ll never find all the dead ones. A single dead snail can raise ammonia levels in a 20 litre tank to well over 8ppm, which is more than enough to kill all your fish.

Pull out as many snails as you can, and dump them in the garden. The less snails in the tank breeding the better.

If you don’t want to dry your tank out, talk to a reputable pet shop about a snail eating fish. Clown Loaches LOVE snails, and will decimate the snail population. Do your research first though. Clown Loaches live a long time, and have some pretty specific tank needs.

Answer 7

I had a similar problem when i bought some java moss. i didn't know that there were snail eggs in the moss, they hatched about a week after, then there were about 1 dozen of them within a week and the number quickly rose. I don't mind them so much, but when i clean my tank, I just siphon them out. If you dry out your tank completely you will need to cycle your tank alll over again, it will put your remaining fish in a lot of stress...

Answer 8

put a couple of pieces of cucumber into the tank, then collect the snakes from it after a while.

don't try to kill the snakes with chemicals, they'll rot in your fish tank.

anyway, you can only have too much snails if you way overfeed your fish. feed much less, so that no food falls onto the ground and snails will stop to reproduce.

Answer 9

OK. This is a serious solution... but take out all of the fish you want and put them in a fresh holding tank. Then...hot water and bleach in the new tank and it will kill anything still crawling. Also put anything else you use (nets, etc.) in there too. Do it in your bathtub and wear old clothes because it is messy. Rinse everything extremely well and start all over. The snails you are talking about hitchhiked from where you bought your fish, probably on the net or plants. Good luck! PS: I have had this problem and the only permanent cure was the above.

Answer 10

I know this sounds mean ,but I don't know what else to do with the snails , so I get them out or the ones around the top with a paper towel sometimes crushing them and then flush them down the toilet

Answer 11

I know this is kinda mean...but if you want to get rid of your snails...get loach(s) because they do better in numbers....yoyos,khuliis,and clowns can clean your tank up really fast...just be sure to give them a bigger home when you are done with them...so that they can live happily ever after... hope this helps....