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assassin snails or a couple of yoyo loaches?


DLMyth
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Would hate to do this but what do you guys think. Either 1 or 2 assassin snails or a couple of yoyo loaches for a healthy balance of snails in a 29gal tank. I have right now over 50 snails of all sizes. I feel bad wanting to kill them but the bladder and ram horns are multiplying pretty fast. Only one I wanted were my trumpet snails lol. I am feeding a little more than usual but that's because of the new fries in the tank. All I want is a balance not completely eliminate them since they do have a purpose.
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On 7/22/2021 at 12:54 PM, Biotope Biologist said:

I don't think either will give you a healthy balance. No matter how much you feed, the snails and yo-yo loaches will decimate the snail population. The population will balance itself out, but if you want to get rid of them you can set snail traps using lettuce or zucchini as bait. 

I agree but the Assasin snails would do it at a slower rate. Seems just trying to control the population and yo-yo loaches would wipe it out fast. That’s my opinion think Assasin snails would eat them at a slower pace 

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Assassin snails are a bit of a check on ramshorns for me but they also enjoy fish foods. I have assassins and MTS I have them more because I enjoy them than for any ability to remove all other snails. 

I would grab an organic cucumber or zucchini rinse it, freeze it, and drop it in the tank where you could net it back out easily. Most of my overpopulation of snails flocks to it and I just net them out with the veggie in one shot. I consider loaches as the true snail assassins but even then its not total removal. My dwarf chain loach group is in a 50 gallon and keeps the MTS population down in the substrate during daylight hours. It appears that I have almost no trumpet snails however there are still plenty in there churning the substrate and removing the decaying plant and animal matter. If I check at night there is a decent population on the hunt but they are out of sight out of mind at this point. f they appear in daylight the loaches slurp them up immediately.  

The yoyo loach in the wild can get pretty significant size wise. I went with the group of dwarf chain loach because they stay fairly small and would fit most my tanks in a group

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I have 2 assassin snails in my 15g. Had to get them because I had nearly 100 pest snails, and while they’ve kept the population in check (I’ve maybe got an average of 20 snails at any one time now) they certainly haven’t wiped out  the group. 
 

I went for the assassin snails because I heard that they wouldn’t completely eliminate the snail population so long as I only had a handful of them. 

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I put 2 assassins in a 100g and they wiped out all the bladder snails that came in w/ the plants. I had over 100 of them. then the assassins bred and I had to get rid of those. caught them w/ a diy snail trap and caught 40 of them.  still see one now and again.  I suggest snail trap.

 

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On 7/22/2021 at 3:40 PM, DLMyth said:

Thanks guys for all the information, I don't want to completely eliminate the population since the snails do have a job and contribute to the well being of the tank overall.  

Yeah do add a couple assasin they will keep it in check without killing them all you can do 2 

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You could let them go. They self regulate as your fry grow and there is less food for them they will die back to the appropriate numbers. Until then it keeps the food from rotting on the floor. You could also manually remove some and take them to your lfs as feeders or pets. 

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