# How do I kill snails in my CRS planted tank?



## jnaz (May 18, 2007)

I have a planted tank with CRS, a few guppies and lots of unwanted snails. How do I get rid of them without harming my CRS, guppies, or plants? The squashing method does not work. Ten appear in their place. Help!


----------



## eklikewhoa (Jul 24, 2006)

If they aren't doing any harm I don't see the problem since they will pick up after the CRS. If you really want to get rid of them you could bait them and remove them manually.


----------



## A_Shea (Jun 2, 2007)

Manual removal is probably the only way to go with out affecting your shrimp or plants. Good luck!!


----------



## C.ton (Nov 6, 2006)

yea, i think people normally use cucumber or zuchini..i forget


----------



## Wood (Jul 27, 2006)

If they aren't so big that they eat the food without letting the CRS eat then I would just let them be. They are very beneficial for a shrimp tank as a cleanup crew, as long as they dont get too big. If they get too big them just remove them. Do not use any chemicals or squish them.


----------



## crash_kt (Aug 8, 2007)

Put some lettece in the tank at night on the bottom and remove them in the morning.


----------



## erijnal (Apr 5, 2006)

jnaz, this method worked for me really well for getting rid of pond snails and ramshorn snails:

1. Evaluate your feeding quantities. Overfeeding leads to rapid snail population growth.

2. Manually remove all visible snails. This is for the obvious reason of getting rid of sexually active snails. 

3. Remove any egg clutches you can find. You'd be surprised at how few snails actually survive after hatching. My snails loved laying clutches on my Anubias, and when I uprooted those to re-scape, I disturbed TONS of empty baby snail shells. Getting rid of egg clutches further lowers the survival/reproduction rate

4. Check for snails about an hour after the lights have turned off. The reason for this is that I've found snails are more willing to travel about when the lights are out, and you can pick off the ones that were hiding when the lights were on


It will take time and dedication to finally get rid of snails. A tweezer really helps too, if you want to smash the snails in the tank or just pick them out. I've also found that having hardscape such as driftwood in the aquarium really hinders the removal effort, probably because we're less willing to move it around to catch any hidden snails. As mentioned before though, snails are beneficial for your tank in most cases for many different reasons, like eating excess food and turning the substrate. Personally, the regular and mini ramshorns have really grown on me

By the way, if you have Malaysian trumpet snails, give up hahhaha.. those snails have been observed to survive bleach nukes, pretty scary. Once, I got some free plants shipped to me, but they had MTS all over them. Needless to say, I chucked the plants


----------

