# Plants + Snails + Saltwater = Solution?



## PlantsAndMe (Apr 3, 2005)

Alright so a week ago I had like only three pond snails....today there's a pond snails in every square inch or so of my shrimp tank. Now, I was wondering if it was possible to dip the plants (along with the snails) into a saltwater solution (ocean water for example) to get rid of them? I have easy access to seawater because I live like 3 miles from the beach but I'm not sure if this method would work. Any advices, comments, or opinions would be helpful


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## Shrimp&Snails (Mar 27, 2006)

If they reproduced that fast you are way overfeeding.

You could give the plants a salt bath (not sure how this would affect the plants) and kill as many snails as you see but it's very difficult to rid your tank of them all unless you have snail eating loaches.


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## trenac (Jul 16, 2004)

I think the best way would to be to physically remove them from the tank; as many as you can each day. Cutting back on feedings will also help control the snail population. You may even be able to sale the snails on Aquabid.


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## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

Clown loaches  they eat snails like there is no tomorrow. A small school of 3+ will decimate the snail population in a matter of days-weeks. I successfully had a snail free tank during their stay in my tank and even 6 months later after removing them. 

They tend to eat snails proportionate to their size. For example, a small loach won't eat a massive snail, rather they pick on the new babies. So buy several smaller loaches to eat the babies and manually crush the adults. That should get rid of them in no time.


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## YuccaPatrol (Mar 26, 2006)

I agree with the loaches as the best snail control. Buy a few and return them to the LFS once they are done if you dont' want to keep them.


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## trenac (Jul 16, 2004)

Loaches are good at eating snails, but they may also eat the shrimp.


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## Six (May 29, 2006)

they will definitely eat the shrimp. i agree more water changes and less food will help the population. my dirty tanks have tons of snails. (i like them though. 3-5 different species that i never bought!)


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## YuccaPatrol (Mar 26, 2006)

I have also gotten rid of MTS by hand removal. I accidentally got some in my shrimp tank and I began to see babies appearing. I removed all of the large ones I could find and then focused on removing any small ones I could see whenever i looked into the tank if they were easy to get to. In a few weeks I had no more of them.


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## PlantsAndMe (Apr 3, 2005)

Alright I've decided to manually remove the shrimps. It works quite well on it's first day. The method is simply putting a boiled spinach in the shrimp tanks which attracts both snails and shrimps. In the morning I had about 10+ full grown snails on it and then I simply use a turkey baster and suck up the spinach and snails along with it (the spinach is soft and light so it is easily sucked up). The shrimps enjoys the spinach so it's a win-win situation . I've thought about using loaches but then I realize they're going to eat my shrimps . Thanks for all your help guys


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