# Snails Eating Healthy Plants



## LiveHumanSkeleton (Jun 25, 2010)

Well, as the title says I'm experiencing the loss of healthy plants due to the voracious appetites of my planted tank's snail population. I was under the impression that snails are beneficial to any planted tank because of their ability to control algea. So what's going on and is there anything I can do to stop it. Any advice is much appreciated.


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## Seattle_Aquarist (Mar 7, 2008)

Hi DeadAlienBody,



> I'm experiencing the loss of healthy plants due to the voracious appetites of my planted tank's snail population.


It depends upon the snail type and types of plants but typically most snails will eat plants, especially plants with softer leaves.



> I was under the impression that snails are beneficial to any planted tank because of their ability to control algea.


Again it depends upon the snail species but typically snails eat all sorts of material: uneaten food; dead fish; dead plant leaves; live plant leaves; algae. I don't have snails in any of my planted aquariums. I did initially, but they damaged my plants so they had to go. I used the high-tech technique for snail eradication, squished them against the glass. It took about 6 weeks, but I got rid of all of them and I have been snail free of over a year. New plants I buy go into a 10 gallon quarantine tank for 2 weeks to make sure their are no snails or snail eggs lurking on them.


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## LiveHumanSkeleton (Jun 25, 2010)

Thanks for the reply, but I've got to admit that I don't have it in me to squish the dang things. If it wasn't for their destructive abilities I wouldn't mind having them at all. I haven't placed any fish in the tank yet so they're my only source of amusement at this point.


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## riseabovethesun (Jul 15, 2010)

DeadAlienBody said:


> Thanks for the reply, but I've got to admit that I don't have it in me to squish the dang things. If it wasn't for their destructive abilities I wouldn't mind having them at all. I haven't placed any fish in the tank yet so they're my only source of amusement at this point.


You know I was the same exact way, refusing to smash snails. But then they started destroying my madagascar lace leaf, my ulvaceus, anubias and so forth. Those plants have been around for so long and have taken a lot of work, so I ended up smashing quite a bit of snails. If that's too much there are always loaches that work, but that depends on what other fish you will be using and how big your tank is, clown loaches are popular for snail eating but become very large. I've recently added assassin snails into my tank to manage the snail population and to prevent me from having to smash too many. It's not any fun but sometimes its hard to let a lot of money and labor go to waste by snails.


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