# brought home unwanted from lfs help!!!!!!



## scorp (Dec 17, 2008)

recently bought some hornwort plants at lfs and have started noticing tiny snails in my tank! i have been removing them but they keep multiplying faster than i can remove . they are going to take over my tank and maybe the whole world if i dont stop them!!!!!!!!!!  lol any ideas??????


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## newbiefishfanatic (Dec 11, 2008)

*lettuce*

i have the same problem. i can never FULLY get rid of them, but what i do is put a lettuce leeaf (washed) in the tank. they all climb on to eat, then just through out the lettuce leaf, or pick the snails off and flush 'em. works like a charm! may sound kinda cruel, but when ur dealing with 20+ snails, something has to be done! also, wipe down the inside of the tank, just below the rim, and just above the water level. helps. you could always post under this thread too... http://www.gtaaquaria.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6103 and see if anyone wants them as feeders.


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## proud2bcanadian (Nov 13, 2006)

Copper kills snails. But it will kill other inverts too like shrimp. It can also affect scaleless fish like loaches in higher doses.
What you can do is drop some pennies (clean them with vinegar first) into the tank, and the copper from them may be enough to kill the snails, but definitely won't be enough to harm any loaches.
If worse comes to worst, just go to the LFS and pick up some CopperSafe. If you tell the person working there that the plants they sold you were infested, they may be nice enough to give you some. Be warned however, again, that the copper will kill all inverts, harm most scaleless fish, and it will stay in the water for at least a month.

Hope that helps,

EDIT: As for the CopperSafe, a full dose will be safe if you don't have any inverts or scaleless fish in the tank. If you have no other inverts, and some scaless fish, use half the dose. If you have some inverts, you will have to resort to another method like what "newbiefishfanatic" had suggested. Same can be accomplished with cucumber/zucchini as your plecos will eat this (if you have any) and then the snails will be the scavengers.


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## blossom112 (Mar 19, 2008)

Awe i know i hate snails unless they are pretty 
Rinse your plants tou buy really well trying to take any eggs off you can ... when you buy them .
Im having problems in the shrimp tank ....i take plants out rinse eggs off And plop them back ..
QT the plants when you bring them home?


Good luck


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## scorp (Dec 17, 2008)

they are in my fry tank , i have swordtails and guppys in there . do you think pennys would be ok with them , and how many?


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## newbiefishfanatic (Dec 11, 2008)

*go au natural!!*

other than copper, who the hell knows where pennies have been! y would you put copper in your fish tank anyway? just to kill snails? and risk your fry? dont take chances with your little ones. and if you are going to put pennies in your tank, sanitize them first. yuck.


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## blossom112 (Mar 19, 2008)

copper tends to stay in tanks forever ....
I would myself just pluck them out and rinse plants once every week or 2 to get the eggs off eventually they will be all but gone .
Chances are if you treat a tank then in the future you have unexplained deaths you can bet it was from treating your tank .
Mybe in future QT all your plants , this is what i plan gonna set up a bucket with a HOB just for that .
Only snails i want are the ones i buy  
just my outlook.


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## ameekplec. (May 1, 2008)

Copper will also stunt or kill plants. Bad idea.

You can either live with them (probably the better option), or get something to eat them. Are they just small snails, or do they grow large? Chances are that they are beneficial, so I' just liv with them.


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## mr.sandman (Mar 22, 2007)

You could try to put some loaches in their to help rid of them


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## proud2bcanadian (Nov 13, 2006)

scorp - The fry may not make it through a copper treament, however it will not affect your guppies or swordtails. 1 to 2 dozen pennies, well cleaned with vinegar (like I mentioned in my last post) will be sufficient. Take them out after 24 hours.

newbiefishfanatic - Copper is a very commonly used medication in the fish hobby. It is used to kill most parasites (ironically). It is also used as a preventative treatment to ward off any parasites from attacking fish upon arrival from overseas' suppliers.

blossom112 - The copper levels that remain in a tank after a month (if the tank has had regular water changes, and a couple carbon changes) is not enough to affect most living organisms except for shrimp (which are the most sensitive to copper, next comes bacterias, and following that are snails, fish, and plants). In the future, if one would like to add shimps or snails to the tank, you can use Kordon's metal remover to take the copper out, and if given enough time, common water conditioners will also remove it.

ameekplec. - In high doses and/or for extended periods of time, copper will indeed kill plants. There are some plants that will react to copper immeadiately, but in a simple 10g tank, without any expensive plants, I'm not going to worry about that. In my old planted tank, I treated with copper sulphate whenever I added a new fish to reduce the possibility of any parasites. I never had a problem with my plants.

EDIT to add : As for adding fish that will eat the snails, most of them are loaches and some catfish. Khuli loaches are the only ones I would recommend adding to a 10g tank and they only do a mediocre job with snails. Most commonly available loaches (Clowns, YoYos...) will get too large, aggressive, or will not be comfortable in such a small tank.
The main issue with a snail infestation is not the snails themselves, it is the eggs. That's why just removing the snails will be a daunting task that will become more of a routine than anything.
Also, another problem worth pointing out when using the copper method is that when the copper kills the snails, they will rot, causing an increase in ammonia in the tank. Water changes are critical at this point, so make sure you stay on top of them - 3 times a week, 25%.


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## newbiefishfanatic (Dec 11, 2008)

well, i dont think you have to ligitimize yourself to anyone p2bc. scorp asked a question, and we have all given our different answers. thats what this forums all about! i think the others and myself were just concerned with the copper because there are fry involved. obviously, copper can be a good thing, although there are many other choices for parasites and such that are safe for everyone. (plants, fry, inverts ect.) just worried about the fry. i think we all get a little tense when baby fry could be effected.


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## characinfan (Dec 24, 2008)

This won't help in the present situation (too late), but when I used to keep a snail-free tank years ago, I'd dip each new plant I bought in a dilute solution of potassium permanganate. No snail survived, but the plants were fine. (Rinse them off well before adding to tank!)


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## proud2bcanadian (Nov 13, 2006)

Sorry, I didn't mean to come across like that...a lot of people are afraid of using Copper because they see that it is used to treat parasites. Many years ago, erythromycin was the strongest medication out there, now, you can probably throw in 4x the dosage and the fish won't be affected by it as much as they used to because they have developed an immunity to it (captive bred/farm raised fish more so than wild caught). Copper is along those same lines. Now, we have metrodinazol and praziquantel to fight most parasites as the parasites have adapted and become stronger and more resistant to copper.

Again, I didn't mean to come off as being rude or demeaning.


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## proud2bcanadian (Nov 13, 2006)

Good tip characinfan!


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## newbiefishfanatic (Dec 11, 2008)

*fish*

youre absolutely right about fish being more resilient to infections, diseases and meds. my mother (now 68) used to keep fish. (70s and 80s) her father tried and tried again to keep mollies, but they were so new to the hobby that they would get ich and died. funny thing, ich wasnt as infectios as it is now though, and only the infected fish would die. so i guess in a way, the fish have become more suseptible too over time. (ich has become such a strong infectious little bugger) so what we know today as hardy fish, started out not so hardy and really hard to keep in a tank.

...not sure why i wrote that, just interesting i guess.


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## Zebrapl3co (Mar 29, 2006)

Not really, the fish are pretty much the same if not for some, even more sensitive. It's just that we've come a long way in our knowledge of fish keeping and how to care and treath them.

As for the snail issue, you can do the copper poisoning, but there are alternatives. I find that if I get 1 or 2 pea puffer(s). They will endlessly hunt down the snails for you. I find that my tanks with puffers have very little snails. There will always be some, but I don't see them. Anyway, you can't really expect a planted tank to be snail free. Every time you get new plants, there is always that chance of getting snails. They go hand in hand. The other option is to do what Characinfan said.

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## dekstr (Oct 23, 2007)

Once you have snails, they are very hard to get rid of 100% w/o having to resort to chemicals. 

You could try to take everything out of the tank. Do a very thorough cleaning and let all the equipment and tank dry completely. 



The snails doesn't neccessarily have to a bad thing as long as you keep their populations in check.

They do a good job of eating detritus and certain types of algae. Also, when their population blooms it is a sign of overfeeding.

Most loaches do a great job of eating them. I had a snail infestation, then I bought a few polka dot loaches, within days all you saw were shell casings.

There are still hundreds of trumpet snails in my substrate though... but they never surface (probably due to the loaches).


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## Prodicus (Nov 3, 2008)

My yoyo loaches keep snails in check.  
There are still a few, but they are harmless. 
The loaches are the hardest workers in my tank 
and they are well-fed because of that.



dekstr said:


> Once you have snails, they are very hard to get rid of 100% w/o having to resort to chemicals.
> 
> You could try to take everything out of the tank. Do a very thorough cleaning and let all the equipment and tank dry completely.
> 
> ...


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## Riceburner (Mar 14, 2008)

There's a few snails in my community tank....loaches must be doing a good job, cause there used to be more. hmmm...guess I'll have to get some more snails.




...see 2 sides to the coin.


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## Mr Fishies (Sep 21, 2007)

dekstr said:


> The snails doesn't neccessarily have to a bad thing as long as you keep their populations in check.
> 
> They do a good job of eating detritus and certain types of algae. Also, when their population blooms it is a sign of overfeeding.


I agree 100%. I had 3 kinds of snails in my old tank, 2 of them ate plant on occasion, 1 didn't. When I built my 75G planted, I _intentionally _transferred some of the non-plant eating snails from my old tank to it. Not positive of the ID, since I've seen them called Physa Snail, Pouch Snail, Pond snail, Tadpole Snail. (I think scientifically they're Physa gyrina) They're small and kinda cute - I find myself watching them frequently. They jump on bottom clutter (poop, loose leaves etc) and algae or spend their time preening the leaves of plants but I don't think I've ever seen them damage a plant.

They are part of my tank ecology, and as dekstr said they are not always a bad thing, they can be a vital part of the natural clean up crew in any tank if you can get past the "_eek or argh, there's snails in my tank_".


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## scorp (Dec 17, 2008)

first id like to say thanks for all the great advice, dont get me wrong , i like snails usually, they are great to clean the tank , but with these snails , ( i dont know what kind they are ) they scare me because how fast they were multiplying, in one week they went from one to about ten!!!!!!!!!! i dont mind a few but at that rate they would have taken over


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## Shattered (Feb 13, 2008)

Whoa, chill there boys... let's keep this friendly shall we.


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## Forgotmynamesorry (Apr 11, 2009)

If you have a big bucket, you can put your fish in there. Then, completely drain your tank, to kill the snails. Refill the tank, and then put the fish back in. It worked for me when I had a small infestation.


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## betatetra (Sep 27, 2010)

Assasin snails will kill them


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## ppaskova (Apr 27, 2010)

betatetra said:


> Assasin snails will kill them


+1. It worked for me. But make sure your watter is very clean, snails can tolerate dirty watter but assassin snails will not


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## Kurare (Oct 8, 2010)

http://www.aquariumfish.net/information/get_rid_of_small_snails.htm

Borrow a few of friends/member's clown loaches... they really do help.


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## mrsleny (Sep 6, 2010)

I had the same problem. At first I thought my mystery snails were multiplying but I figured out they were pond snails from the hornwort plant I bought. There were literally hundreds. And lots of egg clutches on the glass.

I tried a dwarf gourami (lost him today to indovirus) as well as assassin snails but the only thing that really did the job was the yoyo loach I just picked up. Petsmart only had one left so I will have to buy at least another one when I can. He's quite small right now but very active. 

I think one of my ghost shrimp ate a baby snail. I can see a black blob inside him.


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## SteveButcher (Oct 8, 2010)

Aquarium Product Fluke Tabs will kill snails in 2-3 days. Just one dose Then do a 50 percent water change 2 days later. It also kills Hydra and planaria


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