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Ramshorn snail infestation


NanotankBank
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Hello,

what is everybody’s best method for removing a ramshorn snail infestation without harming fish or shrimp. I don’t want to mix any chemicals into the water so I’m looking more towards predators. Assassin snails or pea puffers? How well do they do and will they harm the shrimp if the pest snail population is high?

On 2/20/2023 at 4:31 PM, NanotankBank said:

Hello,

what is everybody’s best method for removing a ramshorn snail infestation without harming fish or shrimp. I don’t want to mix any chemicals into the water so I’m looking more towards predators. Assassin snails or pea puffers? How well do they do and will they harm the shrimp if the pest snail population is high?

And then to build off that, how many of one or the other would you recommend in a 5gal shrimp tank?

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@NanotankBank My first recommendation would be to feed less. I’ve had populations boom which told me I was feeding too much, and when I cut back (over time, obviously) I have tanks that have very few ramshorns now. 
 

If you want to get a predator to help with the situation you’ll have to consider the other inhabitant. My Pea Puffers demolish snails so that’s how I deal with them when they get out of control (snails get fed to the Pea Puffer tank). I’ve never actually seen my puffers eat shrimp, but over the six months I kept shrimp with them the population declined where it should’ve exploded. 
 

I’ve never kept assassin snails so I can’t comment on them. Just my two cents on the other factors though!

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On 2/20/2023 at 4:34 PM, AllFishNoBrakes said:

@NanotankBank My first recommendation would be to feed less. I’ve had populations boom which told me I was feeding too much, and when I cut back (over time, obviously) I have tanks that have very few ramshorns now. 
 

If you want to get a predator to help with the situation you’ll have to consider the other inhabitant. My Pea Puffers demolish snails so that’s how I deal with them when they get out of control (snails get fed to the Pea Puffer tank). I’ve never actually seen my puffers eat shrimp, but over the six months I kept shrimp with them the population declined where it should’ve exploded. 
 

I’ve never kept assassin snails so I can’t comment on them. Just my two cents on the other factors though!

I never feed the shrimp tank and it still bloomed 😂😂. But thank you for the info I might get an ole pea puffers lol

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Best I have ever found are yoyo loaches.  Those things are snail hunters the likes of which I have never seen.  They cleared out my entire display tank of snails.  It was glorious.  I then put one in a 40 gallon breeder with a TON of ramshorns and they completely took out the entire population in a matter of a week.  Not sure how shrimp safe they are though, I have had them with smaller fish and they don't seem to bother them at all, but I haven't done shrimp yet.  

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On 2/20/2023 at 5:18 PM, Ryan S. said:

Best I have ever found are yoyo loaches.  Those things are snail hunters the likes of which I have never seen.  They cleared out my entire display tank of snails.  It was glorious.  I then put one in a 40 gallon breeder with a TON of ramshorns and they completely took out the entire population in a matter of a week.  Not sure how shrimp safe they are though, I have had them with smaller fish and they don't seem to bother them at all, but I haven't done shrimp yet.  

Unfortunately it’s something I need that can live in a 5gal. I’ll consider those in my bigger tanks tho!

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I have and am still dealing with this a bit myself. Not realizing how rapidly they reproduced. For me I use manual removal. I use frozen)thawed veggies as traps. Zucchini and green beans I have found work best. I'll put one or two of each in the tank held down with a plant weight. As they collect on the veggies to eat you can just take them out clean off the snails and put back in to collect more. That will help get a large number out for a start. Couple that with smaller feedings for your fish and you should be able to get them in check fairly easy. I just slice the zucchini into rounds freeze them for 24 hours or more. Then take out and let thaw to room temp and use. for green beans freeze the same except split the green bean along it's seem an lay flat. Remove the seeds.vajd the nice thing about veggies is they stay very stable in water. I have used pieces for up to 48 hours in a tank 

Edited by TeeJay
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I just bought 10 assassin snails and put them in my 10 gal QT and have been dumping extra pond snails in.  They're eating a lot of them.  Not sure if they will balance out or what yet.  Remains to be seen.  But they're eating them pretty good so far as I can see.  That said, if you've got something too crazy you're going to have to help out.  This is a typical one week cleaning of my discus HOB.  image.jpeg.be550e37761384ca4ed36434460a1ded.jpeg

20230214_184529.jpg.f1707ab8f2edccf2a1333a486fac5e7d.jpg

I usually just kill them, but have started tossing them in QT with the assassins.  Why not? 

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On 2/20/2023 at 8:57 PM, jwcarlson said:

I just bought 10 assassin snails and put them in my 10 gal QT and have been dumping extra pond snails in.  They're eating a lot of them.  Not sure if they will balance out or what yet.  Remains to be seen.  But they're eating them pretty good so far as I can see.  That said, if you've got something too crazy you're going to have to help out.  This is a typical one week cleaning of my discus HOB.  image.jpeg.be550e37761384ca4ed36434460a1ded.jpeg

20230214_184529.jpg.f1707ab8f2edccf2a1333a486fac5e7d.jpg

I usually just kill them, but have started tossing them in QT with the assassins.  Why not? 

Luckily it’s a no filter setup so I don’t have to worry about cleaning that out. Might buy a couple assassin snails. Maybe a pea puffer. Not sure yet

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A couple of assassin snails would be good tankmates to something.  A pea puffer makes that his tank, I believe.  But I have never kept them.  Something to consider.  I thought about getting one so I can throw snails in... But then I am still collecting them.  I will eventually parcel these assassins out. 

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Just be aware that assassin snails will breed and if there is a lot of food their population will explode as well.

I would do some really good gravel vaccing and radically reduce my feeding light hours they have exploded due to an excess of either fish food or algae. So attending to that will see them go back to acceptable numbers. I think I read somewhere that all snails can turn cannibalistic if the food source dwindles.

If you keep your fish a bit hungrier I'm quite sure most will start looking at the snail eggs as snacks to.

I had a mini ranshorns population in my shrimp tank at the start but they have now been out competed by the shrimp and I barely see any now.

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Lately, I started having my MTS population going backwards. I had a huge boom when I had to leave the town and had my parents take care of the tank for some time. Meanwhile hair algae bloomed as well.

It takes time, but correct what is going wrong in the tank. There should be something going wrong. It took me 4-5 months to keep the tank balance back. Keep up with maintenance, try adding stuff that competes them for food, and I believe it should be fine. Like adding nerites for algae competetion, bottom dwellers for cleaning up extra food on the bottom of the tank, and keeping up with maintenance and gravel vacs so no mulm/detrius left for them to feed on. also try to not leave decaying plant matter in the tank. Basically try eliminating food source in short, but everything I mention here is actually a food source for them, so try eliminating them all and/or add some sort of competition. That way they balance their population out.

I've seen my MTS outcompeting bladder snails for food sources and they eliminated their population as a whole.

Assasin snails become the next infestation as they also breed A LOT, and you may not notice how many you have in your substrate, like MTS. I never added assasin snails and I would not advice them to be added tbh. Cause they are opportunistic carnivores that you gotta feed after some time anyway, and they reproduce fast enough to become the next "pest snail" which don't have clean up crew benefits.

 

Edited by Lennie
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I added a single assassin to my 20 long about a month ago. I have a betta and several panda corys and since I tend to over feed the corys, I have at least 200 ramshorns. After adding the assassin, it never moved for two days. Then it disappeared into the substrate and haven’t seen it since. Can’t say yet if it’s making a dent. @jwcarlsonwhen do you see yours?  How do you know when your assassin dies?  I didn’t realize when buying it that it could be female with eggs.  So I do worry about having a different snail problem and never being able to put a mystery snail in there. Has any tried digging for their assassins when they need to relocate them?  Or do they make an appearance every now and then?

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Assassin snails have worked well for me but they take some time. They reproduce but not nearly as rapidly or prolifically as the pest snails from my experience.  In a 5 gallon tank, I don't think youll have much issue taking out the assassin snails if you ever wanted to. 

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I have only had them in my barebottom QT tank for a few weeks.  So I can't answer that for you, @Stef.  I'm not sure if they'd eat much larger snails or not.  My thought process is that in the tanks where I have snail problems (one tank, really) it's because I greatly overfeed my discus.  It's a bare bottom and I change 90% of the water.  The hangup is in the HOB the snails live unmolested.  I think a few assassins could make a downward pressure on the population.  At the very least if I have 100 assassin snails instead of 1000 pond snails, I'll at least be able to do something with the assassins (give away to LFS for example).  And they'll eventually get big enough that they can't hid in coarse sponges so easily.  

In short, if I have to have a snail infestation, I'd take an assassin snail one.  Which might be easy to say because I've not had an assassin snail infestation.  😄 My understanding is that the assassin snail eggs don't hatch for a month or two.

The ones I bought were moving pretty much instantly.  Once they went to work, they do sometimes kind of stop moving.  I wonder if that has to do with them being stuffed after eating a snail.  I don't know if one burrowing in substrate might also be hunting snails that are buried?  I know my MTS are almost always burrowed.  Perhaps they're finding those.

Edited by jwcarlson
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