Snail Problem

[DQ]

Hello,

I have got a problem with tiny snails which have bred after one must of come in on a plant. They are quite small but grow fairly quickly. We remove them from the glass when we can but they seem to be multipling. (We counted 40 last night in our 3 foot tank)

We have 5 small five month old Discus in the tank, (Our first Discus) and some of them have been unwell. (White Poo) The poo may be from the medication we have given them for what we thought was a parasite in their stomach multipling to quickly. Anyway my point is that we think that they may be nibbling on the small snails and getting their illness from them.

I have heard that a clown loach may be good as they eat the snails but a also hear that the loach annoys the Discus.

Any ideas on gettingg rid of the snails in a way which will not harm the Discus?

Cheers,

CMY

3ft Tank ,75 litres, 5 discus, 2 golden algea eaters and 5 neon tetras.

[flukes]

first of welcome to the forums DQ, well loaches are good for eating snails but at the same time you are right they will annoy your discus the reason for this is because the are very active and at night the disturb the discus whilst sleeping, well you said the snail may have came with the plants. If this is a very heavily planted tank the discus will normall rest in amounst the plants (well in my tank they do) ive actually had clown loaches in with the discus before and i found that the loaches didnt really bother the discus because there was a large gap without plants that they would swimm up and down. This might have just been in my case but i found them to be ok. Best bet is too get some and watch the watch happens at night if they are disturbing the discus then take them out, if not then id leave them in until the snails are gone. One thing about snails you think they are gone but one always pops up so leave them in a bit longer.
I havent had the snail problem myself but i have had loaches with discus, might want to wait for some more advice iam just telling you my experiences.

By the way where abouts in melbourne are you??

Cheers
Scott

[DQ]

Thanks for the feedback. Will keep the idea in mind...

Do you know of any medication which will kill the snails but not hurt the discuss?

I am in the Windsor area.

Cheers.

CMY

[Annie]

If you really want to get rid of them, all that you can do is do really deep gravel vac, and scrub the sides of your tank daily, and put a piece of lettuce in the bottom of the tank and turn off the lights. You will then see snails on the lettuce then take it out and keep doing this over and over.

You can try cutting back on the feeding too, the less food source, the less population of snails you will have.

[DQ]

Nice one Annie I will give the lettuce a try. We have tried using the gravel cleaner but the big snails do not seem to suck up the pipe, perhaps the pipe is to thin and not creating enough suction.

Thanks for the tip.

CY

[Annie]

You are most welcome :D

[Lily]

Annie beat me to it! I was going to suggest that you do a manual harvest using a piece of zucchini left on the tank bottom overnight. I am about to implement this in my tank as the worms are starting to wear out their welcome (thay are eating my favourite crypt).

I read that bettas eat snails. Mine certainly don't, but wonder if anyone else has heard/experienced this?