# Has anyone actually used the No-Planaria stuff to...



## mef1975 (Jun 24, 2013)

...completely kill off a snail population, without harming the plants, and were you successful?

Freshwater planted tank without any other creatures, just the bladder snails, which I want gone, but I have plants like Crytocoryne Wendtii and Cabomba Furcata, which must survive. 

A couple different sources have told me that it will work, but the people selling it say that it wont. I'm hesitant to go forward, as this would be quite an expensive venture, even if I lower the water half way, it's still over 50 gallons, I'll be needing a lot of this stuff. 

Of course, I'm told to get some loaches, puffers, gold fish, all sorts of suggestions on creatures that will eat snails, but everyone also appears to be quite torn on whether or not such an approach would actually eradicate the tank of the snails. 

In a gallon container, I tried the Tetra Aquarium Algae Control stuff I had, at 5x the dose, perhaps even 4x, the snails died within 8 hours, but half of them came back to after a water change. I'm not even sure if plants could handle this stuff at such a high dose, especially without a water change. What do you think?

Will I actually have to take all the plants out to treat the tank, but what to treat it with?


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## Deng09 (Feb 16, 2013)

If you have pressurized co2 you can gas the tank and it should kill everything, without harming the plants. Worked for me. I have heard people used carbonated water to have a similar result, haven't tried that though.


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## mef1975 (Jun 24, 2013)

Deng09 said:


> If you have pressurized co2 you can gas the tank and it should kill everything, without harming the plants. Worked for me. I have heard people used carbonated water to have a similar result, haven't tried that though.



I wanted to wait a couple years before getting into CO2 gas, seems like an expensive way to go about it when one isn't already set up for it. Still though, I wonder how much it would take. Also, when one considers how much they'll end up spending on meds and fish to address the problem, might as well get the CO2 system, but yeah, I've never dealt with the stuff, how much would it take? Do I need some sort of CO2 test kit?


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## Raymond S. (Dec 29, 2012)

One Khuli Loach will get them but in time. You go and kill a couple of hundred snails at one time and you may kill everything in the tank/w ammonia from the rotting snails.


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## Deng09 (Feb 16, 2013)

mef1975 said:


> I wanted to wait a couple years before getting into CO2 gas, seems like an expensive way to go about it when one isn't already set up for it. Still though, I wonder how much it would take. Also, when one considers how much they'll end up spending on meds and fish to address the problem, might as well get the CO2 system, but yeah, I've never dealt with the stuff, how much would it take? Do I need some sort of CO2 test kit?


Well if you are going to run co2 you need some sort of drop checker that will monitor your levels anyway. You can buy a cheap one from fluval for like $10-15. 

As for gassing the tank, I didn't monitor anything because I only had plants in the tank. I just turned up the gas and let it run until all the snails and scuds died. You are normally keeping the co2 at the highest levels before it becomes harmful to your fish, so you are just turning it up a little bit from there. Maybe it costs you a couple of days of gas use down the line, which doesn't matter much when a 10lb tank could last you 6-12 months. 

As for the guy recommending loaches, that will pretty much make the problem disappear from view, but it wont get them all. If your loaches ever die, the snails will start creeping up again. I had a cichlid tank that I never even knew had snails, but once I took the cichlids out, a month later the empty tank was loaded with snails. The loaches might be a better idea if you don't mind this.


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## Aplomado (Feb 20, 2013)

I does kill snails. It does not kill plants.


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## mef1975 (Jun 24, 2013)

Deng09 said:


> Well if you are going to run co2 you need some sort of drop checker that will monitor your levels anyway. You can buy a cheap one from fluval for like $10-15.
> 
> As for gassing the tank, I didn't monitor anything because I only had plants in the tank. I just turned up the gas and let it run until all the snails and scuds died. You are normally keeping the co2 at the highest levels before it becomes harmful to your fish, so you are just turning it up a little bit from there. Maybe it costs you a couple of days of gas use down the line, which doesn't matter much when a 10lb tank could last you 6-12 months.



Awesome! Thanks! I too only have plants at this moment, so I might not need to check the level, and instead, just run the gas for a couple days, as you did. I suppose I should turn off the air pump when I do this. Thanks again! Snail free tank, here I come!

Bump:


Raymond S. said:


> One Khuli Loach will get them but in time. You go and kill a couple of hundred snails at one time and you may kill everything in the tank/w ammonia from the rotting snails.


Oddly enough, I'm not too concerned about an ammonia spike, but thanks for mentioning it. I suspect it will cause more problems with the fuzzy/smoky white fungus on the plants. I was thinking of just letting it run its course, or perhaps, doing the Two-Punch H2O2 + CO2 treatment, but wanted to address the snails first. Heck, part of me is wondering if the CO2 gassing of the snails will actually help get rid of the fungus too (avoiding the H2O2), then again, there's that ammonia spike to watch out for (H2O2 and water reservoir on stand-by) Thanks!


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## Subtletanks91 (May 29, 2013)

Get a group of clown loaches or angelic, you, zebra botia, they will eradicate the tank of snails faster than puffers. And safer than no planaria.


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## mef1975 (Jun 24, 2013)

Wow, I just realized they got CO2 tablets.


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## dmagerl (Feb 2, 2010)

Yes, I used it to rid my shrimp tank of bladder snails. I used the full dosing schedule listed on the package.

There's only one problem. While it does kill adult snails, it doesnt kill eggs. So you pretty much have to repeat dosing a week or two after the first dose, and maybe another dose after that.

My shrimp tank is glass bottomed and I was smashing teeny snails for weeks afterwards. They were pretty easy to see, but in a tank with gravel or one that is heavily planted, smashing teeny snails may not work out too well.


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## CanDid (Aug 6, 2014)

I used AZOO Snail Treatment from plantedaquariumscentral.com and it killed all of my pouch snails and so far hasn't harmed my plants. It claims it doesn't harm fish either, but I'm at the end of a fishless cycle so I can't comment on that. AZOO, as others have claimed with the No-Planaria, doesn't kill the eggs though, so now I have a bunch of tiny specs crawling around my tank. Will treat again in a week to get them before they make eggs! The only 100% true way (as I have recently learned) to keep snails out of your tank is to dip new plants in 5% bleach for 3 min, then highly concentrated de-chlorinated water, then rinse with tap water before introducing them to your aquarium. This will kill the snails and the eggs.


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## CanDid (Aug 6, 2014)

OK so about a week and a half later I treated my tank again to kill the new snails that hatched. After 24 hrs the tiny snail numbers had been drastically reduced, but there were still a good amount of snails left. AZOO says to treat again after 24 hrs if needed so I did. After another 24 hrs (48 hrs total w 2 treatments) I did a 50% water change. The directions say to do 30%. After the water change I still see baby snails.

My conclusion: This treatment worked great with the initial treatment and killed ALL of my common pouch snails. However, the eggs all hatched out and a second treatment has not had the same success as the first. My theory (just a theory mind you) on this is that the baby snails had built up some sort of partial immunity from having been treated whilst in the egg sac. Although the second treatment did kill most of them, it did not kill all of them like the first treatment did. Time to get a dwarf puffer or some yoyo loaches!

Wish I had known about the bleach treatment before I planted my tank!


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## caique (Mar 16, 2012)

Get yourself some assassin snails.


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## ShyShrimpDoc (Jun 28, 2012)

Assassin snails work good, spixi snails will eat most other snails and their eggs. The spixi eggs are huge (so are they making for easy removal). Also you can reach higher concentrations if you shut down the filter and any air stones before adding co2.


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## TankFreak420 (May 31, 2014)

Assassin snails is the way to go, I know its replacing one snail with another but assassins are much cooler to look at.:hihi:


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