Pest Snails

[Ryan1988]

Hello,

How does one remove pest snails? These buggers tend to eat my amazon sword plant. 

[Fish Folk]

Five thoughts here:

(1) What kind of snails are yours? Ramshorn? Pond snails? Malaysian Trumpet snails? Something else?

(2) Are you sure they’re actually eating your Sword? Might your Sword be melting / breaking down, and snails are munching on that after the fact?

(3) Remove as many as you can by hand. Use a tool for more difficult ones. Try a water change — often respond by moving up the glass. Consider a snail trap then for the persistent ones. Will take a few weeks of vigilance.

(4) What food source accumulated to make them multiply? Cut back on feeding your tank maybe? They’re multiplying fast because your tank somehow has  available extra fuel for growth.

(5) Bear in mind that, like Duckweed, snails are _hard_ to be rid of. Your project will be arduous.

[Ryan1988]

i'm not sure what kind, they are white. I'm assuming they are eating the plant because i keep finding holes in the leaves.

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 11/12/2022 at 1:55 PM, Ryan1988 said:

i'm not sure what kind, they are white. I'm assuming they are eating the plant because i keep finding holes in the leaves.

Any pictures?

[JettsPapa]

Most common "pest" snails only eat dead plant leaves.

[lefty o]

they probably arent eating the sword. remove manually the ones you can, get some assassin snails to help control the population. reduce feeding (overfeeding makes snail numbers increase directly proportionally to amount of extra food), and as a last resort there are chemical treatments to kill them off.

[TeeJay]

Yes I would venture to say it's a nutrient deficiency. Not to say the snails are not eating any plant leaves that are dying off from that. I have everything from bladder, ramshorns nerites and mystery snails in all of my tanks and they have never actually eatin any healthy plants or leaves. Pictures would help us identify better a plant deficiency to help find what your lacking. 👍