Freshwater Snail Removal
While you often hear hobbyists saying they can’t get rid of all the snails in their tank, having snails in your freshwater aquarium as a rule is actually quite beneficial. Most snails act as a “clean up crew” in the aquarium, eating excess food, decaying plant or fish matter, and moving gravel on the tank bottom. The problem with snails in an aquarium is that they reproduce very quickly, and can marr your beautiful tank by being stuck all over the glass and decorations. The real challenge is keeping the snail population in check.
Snails are most often introduced into an aquarium through plants, gravel, or decorations that have moved from other tanks that have snails. While the snails themselves may be small, their eggs are even smaller! Unless you are willing to thoroughly clean everything before it goes into your aquarium, snails will eventually be introduced to your tank.
| Snail Eating Fish | In most cases, this solution requires the least amount of work on your part. Results will vary with the type of fish, your feeding patterns, and the type of snail in the aquarium. Common snail eating fish include; Malawi Cichlids, varieties of Gourami, varieties of Bettas, and most Botia species. |
| Manual Removal | This is simply just picking the snails out as you spot them. This is probably the most common method used by hobbyists, and the most immediately effective. Depending on what is in your tank, leaving a tray of food overnight will attract the snails, which can then be easilly removed by removing the container in the morning. |
| Reduced Feeding | Snails can only populate a tank to a level that the tank will sustain them. This means that by cuttting down on feedings to your fish, you can effectively reduce the overall snail population. |
| Snail Killing Chemicals | You’ll see snail remover chemicals sold in most pet stores. While they are usually effective, anything designed to kill snails is probably not healthy for other plants or fish. Even if the chemicals are harmless to the fish, the massive die off of snails will leave decaying snail bodies in your aquarium, which can affect the water quality. |
| Complete Cleaning | As a last resort, and the only 100% effective method to remove snails, you can completely tear down your tank setup and clean everything. This includes gravel, the hood, plants, the filter… anyplace a snail may have been able to lay eggs. This extreme is probably not practicle for most hobbyists. |
By: Phi Anderson
The last 2 are my favorite methods. The chemical one works wellbut not on MTS. And no you don’t have to run out and get any special product for killing snails. Pure copper (I beleive it’s copper sulfate) found in most ich medications for sensative fish works just fine.
In older more mature systems massive die off isn’t that much of a concern as it is in newer systems. But IMHE I’ve never seen a mass die off of the snails with this method. Dose 2-3 times what the package says you should use for cureing ich and don’t do any water changes for about 3 weeks. over the course of those 3 weeks you will slowly notice that there are less and leass snails in the tank. The only word of caution i can think of is don’t use this on a tank that has other inverts you wish to keep as they will parish also.
The last method is my favorite. It works best, and from all the times I’ve had to do this I can tell you just toss the gravel in the trash and get more. Bleaching doesn’t effect MTS and baking dosen’t totally get rid of them either.
I’ve done this so many times I have a system to doing it, and I do not EVER have a bacteria bloom afterwords.
I’m just wondering what “MTS” stands for as well as if it is cupric sulphate or pure copper? As the two are different.
Cupric sulfate pentahydrate is CuSO4*5H2O, also known as “blue vitriol” and “bluestone”. That is to say, it is copper sulfate with five water molecules incorporated into a crystal structure. When you put it in water, the ions disassociate and you have free copper in the water. If you put pennies in your tank, small amounts of copper will dissolve into the water. So effectively, cupric sulfate and copper pennies will do the same thing. The difference is that if you use cupric sulfate, you know how much you’re putting in the tank, and you can limit it to exactly what will kill snails without harming fish.
If you use cupric sulfate crystals, it will harm amphibians and invertebrates – snails, as well as crabs, shrimp, frogs, etc. Cupric sulfate is blue…don’t use anhydrous cupric sulfate, as this will have more copper ions per gram, and your measurements will be off. If you only have the anhydrous form, leave it exposed to air for a while, and when it turns blue, that means it has absorbed water out of the air and become cupric sulfate pentahydrate. Make a 6.34% solution of the pentahydrate form (add 6.34 grams to 100ml of water), then use ONE DROP per gallon. You’ll have to do some water changes after that (do a google search to figure out how much).
You can prevent snails from getting into your tank by dipping them in a potassium permanganate (KMnO4) solution of 20mg/L for a minute, washing them off, and then adding them to the tank. It is a strong oxidizer and will react with organic matter (i.e. snails). If you want to put it directly into the tank, use 1.5-1.75mg/L. I got this info from http://madhunag.tripod.com/potassium.html and you should go there to see precautions and neutralization treatments.
Also, a quick google search yielded “Malaysian Trumpet Snail” as the first result for “MTS”. You should try google before asking questions on forums because it can take months for you to get an answer here.
The only problem I had with snails when they appear in my tank were them getting into the filter. I purchased a plant and shortly thereafter I had hundreds of snails in my tank. On the glass, plants, rocks and filter. Looked pretty sweet. They helped with gravel aeration immensely. Eventually, I stopped feeding my fish for awhile and they ate the population down to a manageable level. Could use some more right now.
Thank you so much for the information. It was extremely helpful!