Snails are taking over my tank!

[grendel]

First there was one teeny tiny snail, obviously smuggled its way into the tank along with some plants. Naively I thought it was a) cute and b) possibly useful for eating algae, so didn't pick it out. I had NO idea what I was letting myself in for! Fast forward a couple of months and now the tank is riddled with the little so and sos, lurking everywhere.
I have two questions:

• Apart from irritating me, are they actually going to be doing any harm to either the plants or fish?
• What is the best way to get rid of them, now that they are so well entrenched?

Any suggestions gratefully received!

The best way to get rid of them is get a plec

Or a loach -clown loaches love eating snails

I wouldn't add any clown loaches unless you have a 6ft tank, they get massive. There are smaller loaches but the easiest way to control snail numbers is to keep your tank cleaner and cut down on feeding.

Whatever you do, don't use any of the aquarium pesticides that you can get; hundreds of snails dying all at the same time= ammonia spike= very bad for fish.

To get rid of a large number of snails in a short space of time without chemical warfare, put a lettuce leaf (or any sort of green veg- spear it on a teaspoon if it won't sink) in the tank overnight. In the morning it will be covered in snails and you can take it out and dump it in the compost bin.

They won't do any harm in small numbers, but in large numbers they can get in the filter and bugger up the impeller. They also add to the bioload of the tank so can mess up water parameters.

If you do the lettuce leaf thing you then need to control numbers, make sure you only feed what your fish can eat in 2-3 mins and scoop the rest out. Do this once a day. Also make sure you get right in all the cracks and vacuum the gravel when you do a water change so that there's not loads of detritus knocking around. You could also get a couple of assassin snails- they will breed too but not as fast as the 'pest' species.

DOn't try to get rid of snails entirely, you'll drive yourself nuts. But the numbers can be controlled. Good luck :)

Thanks for all the suggestions!

Will have a go with the lettuce technique to see if that cuts the numbers down, and will give the tank a good hoover.

Alternatively you can buy assassin snails from fish shops- out a couple of these in and they eat the other snails- but don't reproduce as quickly. They have a spiral/ pointy shell. 2 or 3 should be enough to get the other snails in check.

Are you in York? I have 106 assassin snails at last count, you could have some!

We found that yoyo loaches did the trick though, until they suddenly rapidly multiplied my 9 original assassin snails couldn't keep up.

Definitely get some assassin snails. I got three for my tank, within a couple of weeks the number of 'pest' snails had dropped dramatically. There's now a fairly nice balance going on of a few pest snails still knocking about to keep the assassins fed but it's not so much an infestation after all.