# Aquarium Tear Down to KILL Snails



## fishsandwitch (Apr 20, 2008)

No this is not a good idea, some snails will survive. How big is your arowana? You sure you dont wanna try some copper medication? Should be fine with anything but inverts.

You could get get some big clown loaches if you can find any huge ones.


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## @[email protected] (Oct 24, 2007)

if your arowana is still small add a female betta. they love eggs, and rip the adults of the glass and suck them out of the shell. males dont eat as much.


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## mistergreen (Dec 9, 2006)

tearing a tank down is a bit drastic just for snails.. They aren't really that bad. They eat all the left over food in your tank.. You're probably over feeding, that's why there are so many. Just crush them every time you see them. Feed less.. And you can build a snail trap too.. search this forum.


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## RoyalFizbin (Mar 7, 2006)

I tore down a tank recently to get rid of the snails. Took everything out, changed the substrate, filled the tank with hot water. I soaked the filter media in hot water aswell. I picked out all the chrismas moss from all the plants and wood. I decided it was a good time to eradicate my moss infestation aswell. Moss is a pain in the ass when you're trying to grow carpet plants. I picked through all the other plants to remove all the snails as best i could. Next, I did a salt bath of all my plants to try and kill any remaining snails. After doing all this, I set the tank back up again and a week later, i saw a snail. I killed it and I've been killing one every few days. I fail.

Hopefully my vigelent snail hunting will eventually kill the last snail and I'll be rid of them for good.

The snails I have are these http://www.sydneycichlid.com/images/snails/unknown_ramshornesk2.jpg
They're tiny and look like ramshorn sails that have sideways shells. The maximum size seems to be about 3mm. They're very hard to see, especially the babies.


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## froghair (Jan 5, 2008)

I tore a 75 gallon down due to MTS which were literally overrunning it. The fish I kept in it were bluespotted sunfish and a weather loach but even the sunfish didn't eat the MTS. I'm sure I was overfeeding but still things out of control at the moment. I think you could either cut the amount and frequency of feeding, use a betta as suggested though I have no experience doing that or possibly resort to using a med with copper which will kill inverts. Many people love MTS but I'm not among their ranks. I prefer nerite snails because I don't have to worry about them reproducing. I'm not a pro by any means when it comes to what will happen if you do use a medication and end up with many, many dead snails in your tank but I used phosban and purigen and had no problems at all. And my means of eradication was to put my ecocomplete outside on sheets in winter. Even then after several days I had survivors! Luckily, I discovered that after using some of the substrate in a nano tank. I just left the other ecocomplete on the porch in a wheelbarrow and evidently the cold finally killed any that were still lurking. I wish you luck because I do know what you're going through.


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## RoyalFizbin (Mar 7, 2006)

Nerites can be just as big a nuisance. I bought several at a lfs because of the pretty patterns. They lay hard white eggs all over my tanks that can't hatch. The eggs stick to the glass and wood like you wouldn't belive. Nothing short of a razor blade will get them off. Left on their own, these eggs almost seem to last forever. Turns out that nerites have two genders which means I could solve my problem by removing just the female ones but that would mean i have to sit infront of my tank for hours to catch one in the act of laying an egg. I think I'm at the point where i might remove all of them and smash them with hammers.


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## crazie.eddie (May 31, 2004)

Look around for people selling larger loaches.


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## Lupin (Nov 21, 2006)

fishsandwitch said:


> No this is not a good idea, some snails will survive. How big is your arowana? You sure you dont wanna try some copper medication? Should be fine with anything but inverts.
> 
> You could get get some big clown loaches if you can find any huge ones.


Do not even think of using the copper sulfate. Once all the snails die, how are you going to remove _every_ snail there is? Even if you try, water conditions become whacked and the arowana eventually succumbs from ammonia poisoning. I'm sorry but I abhor this practice.



@[email protected] said:


> if your arowana is still small add a female betta. they love eggs, and rip the adults of the glass and suck them out of the shell. males dont eat as much.


Regardless of the size, even bettas do not stand the chance of surviving the arowana.



mistergreen said:


> tearing a tank down is a bit drastic just for snails.. They aren't really that bad. They eat all the left over food in your tank.. You're probably over feeding, that's why there are so many. Just crush them every time you see them. Feed less.. And you can build a snail trap too.. search this forum.


I agree.:smile:



crazie.eddie said:


> Look around for people selling larger loaches.


I would not suggest getting larger loaches just for the sake of consuming the snails. Snails aren't that bad. You just have to control your feeding rations and increase tank maintenance frequency. Why should you use a loach to eliminate the snails? Get the loaches only if you really _like_ the loaches.


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## Greeneer (Jan 18, 2008)

thanks guys for all your replies. My arrowana is about 10 -12 inches. I probably wont tear down my aquarium after reading that someone already did that and the snails came back. I didnt have this problem when i didnt have any plants in my tank. Im new to the planted tank hobby, so i went overboard and filled my tank with plants. I will probably get some loaches (big ones) and see how long that last. Besides, I suspect somehow some snail eggs are in the filter too and thats too expensive to replace.

Does anyone know how long snails or snail eggs can live without water for?


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## Greeneer (Jan 18, 2008)

Bluebell said:


> Do not even think of using the copper sulfate. Once all the snails die, how are you going to remove _every_ snail there is? Even if you try, water conditions become whacked and the arowana eventually succumbs from ammonia poisoning. I'm sorry but I abhor this practice.
> 
> 
> I agree ... arrowana are very sensitive to the water....I know snails are not that bad...i could live with 5 or 10 of them, but im talking about thousands at least...and no im not exxaggerating... I will try not to feed so much and see how that goes...thanks


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## Bethanie (May 7, 2008)

You could also try to bait them. Put something like cucumber or lettuce weighed down in the bottom of the tank. When covered with snails pull out and toss. Repeat until your happy with the snail numbers. Wont get rid of all of them but can help manage the numbers with out having to manually pick either snails, or empty shells out. Could also do a plate or (clean) soda bottle variation. Personally I'm not a big fan of getting loaches to eat snails in a planted tank. What do you do when you need more snails to feed the loaches. Or if they are like my clown loaches and eventually just like to munch holes in your plants despite still having some snails and feeding them a varied diet of mic. sinking pellets.


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## fshfanatic (Apr 20, 2006)

I have a 180 with a 14" Jardini and had a frigging buttload of MTS. What I did, and this took like what seemed forever to do is:
1: Placed large pieces oc cucumber in the tank at night and turned off the lights.
2: As soon as I turned on the lights in the AM I would remove the cucumber and alot of snails. Do this every day for about two weeks.

You will get rid of a good number of them. You can also treat (like I did) with salt. This will kill alot of them, but not all.

Pick them out when you see them. It is a painstakingly long task, but that is really all you can do.

Poisoning them with copper will do a few things. 1: Kill all the snails. 2: Push your ammonia level through the roof with the die off. 3: Kill any scaleless fish you have in the tank.

DO NOT DO THIS.

Adding a Betta is a ridiculous idea. Any Aro over 5" will try to kill it.


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## tundragirl (Feb 15, 2006)

The cucumber method works very well; I run a fishing line string through the slices and drop them in. in a large tank I would drop 3-4 slices in a night. I'll bet after a week you'll be happy with the numbers. With a good feeding regimine you shouldn't have a snail explosion like that.
BTW I had a friend who tore down a snail infested tank for 2 years- put it back up with the same gravel and after 2 months started seeing snails. this was an unplanted tank the 2nd time around, so there was no possible way that they were added.


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