# How to get rid of snails before plants are added



## MonopolyBag (Jan 11, 2008)

I have a 100 gallon tank with no plants in it only 4 hatchet fish in it. I found a small nuisance snail in the sump. I plan on adding plants, is there anyway to get rid of them safely either by copper or any other addative or should i just physically remove them if I see them. I plan on adding plants and would like to remove snails previous to this addition.

thanks


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## Gordonrichards (Apr 28, 2009)

Chemicals would require a few water changes afterward. Not sure if you're planning on having a shrimp tank or not?

You could manually pull some of the snails out daily.
Purchase loaches, puffers or assassin snails.

Eventually the population will fall.

I pull the MTS snails out of my tank when I can.

-Gordon


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## spypet (Jul 27, 2007)

Gordonrichards said:


> assassin snails.












once the snails are gone puffers may starve without other live food.
loaches will not hunt snails effectively with other food available.
an assassin snail is the best way to go. just put two in and plant,
no need to delay planting until the snails are gone. you can leave
one in the sump and one in the tank, then move the sump assassin
to the tank once you are satisfied the snails are all gone.


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## MonopolyBag (Jan 11, 2008)

I do not plan on adding shrimp. I only found the one snail and would much rather have no snails vs. a small population.


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## Franco (Jun 25, 2010)

If you haven't seen any others then I would just go ahead and plant and wait to see more before doing anything about it. Assassins are the way to go though but with a population of food snails as small as you might have, they might starve to death. Copper treatments are never a good idea because they can stick around in your substrate and even the silicone holding your tank together. Fish and plants don't like copper almost as much as snails and shrimp.
A few snails are always good as a cleanup crew though...


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## aquarliam (Dec 26, 2010)

You can treat plants with a snail killer in your plugged up sink or a bucket before adding them into your tank.

Assassin snails are notorious for being picky eaters, and will often times never even touch a pond snail. Mine came to me hooked on ramshorns, they won't eat anything else now.

If you're not keeping shrimp or other invertebrates in your tank, there's no problem in treating your plants.


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## Newt (Apr 1, 2004)

There is nothing wrong with having MTS. Actually they are a good thing in a planted tank.


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## aquarliam (Dec 26, 2010)

Well one thing wrong with having an infestation of MTS is: severely increased bioload. 

Snails are messy and ammonia making powerhouses. Having 50 MTS in a 50 gallon is no problem whatsoever, but in 6 months you'll have 500, and in a year you'll have 10,000.


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## spypet (Jul 27, 2007)

aquarliam said:


> Assassin snails are notorious for being picky eaters, and will often times never even touch a pond snail. Mine came to me hooked on ramshorns, they won't eat anything else now.


very interesting. my experience with various pets tells me your snails can be retrained to eat other snails if given the choice between them and starvation, but I didn't know they could get finicky - thanks for sharing that.

I see assassin snails as tools, so once they've done their job and eaten all the snails, I'm not concerned if they can't survive foraging for not live food. It would be nice if you have friends you can pass your assassin along.

I understand assassins eat about one snail per day, so a typical tank with too many snails will take one a while to eat through. you can always remove the largest and most visible snails by hand.


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## aquarliam (Dec 26, 2010)

Yeah, unfortunately these guys live with cherry shrimp as well.

And despite me trying to train them to eat pond snails, if I don't throw either a few ramshorns or blood worms in there every few weeks, they'll gang up on a cherry shrimp and eat it.

As you may be able to discern, me and my assassin snails have a love/hate relationship. I originally bought them to take care of pond snails AND ramshorns. The LFS didn't bother telling me they fed them ONLY ramshorns from birth. 

Also, when I bought them, I was told they wont bother eating nerites or trapdoor snails, which I have many of. And the first week, they destroyed a family of japanese trapdoor snails in the tank, fouled the water and killed off my entire colony of cherries.

And the worst part is... They're MESSY EATERS!!! They will kill something, eat half and hit the road! Luckily my cherries have adapted to this, and have learned to eat the leftovers, otherwise I'd have a very stinky tank.

Anyways, that's my gripe about assassins, cheeky little buggers... If they weren't so damned interesting, they'd be turtle food.


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## spypet (Jul 27, 2007)

aquarliam said:


> They will kill something, eat half and hit the road.


yeah, I noticed this with micro crabs. I was advised to try to feed baby ramshorn to these aquatic crabs. after a bit of starvation conditioning, a crab finally picked at a ramshorn till the snail died. then the crab lost interest and left me with a half flesh laden ramshorn shell to clean up (other scavengers were not interested), so my quest for effective crab food continues. 
I enjoyed reading your anecdotes since I'm always skeptical when posters write how a living animal was the perfect solution to their problem - because it rarely even begins to solve one problem without creating a whole new set of other problems. I have tried a dozen different cleaner animals over the years only to discover that most of them fell well short of their forum posted hype.


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## Franco (Jun 25, 2010)

My ghost shrimp kill and eat all of the ramshorn and pond snails I try to add to the tank. They don't bother the tiger nerites or MTS though.


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