Q&A for How to Get Rid of Snails in an Aquarium

That depends on the makeup of your tank, but likely the snails will rapidly reproduce because they have no predators. I suggest you introduce a species to your tank that will eat the snails.

Some snails are invasive and may damage the health of living plants and fish. The snails are unwanted, but may get in by accident when introducing fish or plants into the tank.

You can make a snail trap with a plastic bottle and a food pellet. Leave it over night as snails like to move and eat when it's dark. Once the bottle has a lot of snails in it, you can remove them.

Typically the fish only has to be slightly larger than the snail in order to kill or eat it, however in some cases, like pea puffers, they don't need to be larger at all.

Then don't get rid of it! Leave the snail in there.

Although most are now farm-bred, they should have tropical water temperatures. Therefore, you should keep a heater in the tank.

Don't put any chemicals in the water to get rid of the snails, because it'll mess up all of the hardscape. Consider getting loaches, because they'll eat the snails (after they eat the snails, you can continue feeding them pellets).

Copper sulfate is toxic to fish so only use it if you have no fish. It depends on how much you use. If you use too much your plants will suffer from copper toxicity; it will damage the roots or discolor the leaves. I wouldn't recommend using it.

Try adding a teaspoon of salt. I would remove the other fish first if you are worried about their safety. A little bit of salt won't hurt hardy fish, but if you have sensitive fish, definitely quarantine them for a few hours until the salt dissolves. You can kill snails within 24 hours this way. Remove the dead snails so they won't add ammonia to the water with their corpses.

It should work since both snails and limpets are mollusks.

The lifespan of the average trumpet snails 6 months to 1 year.

Snail eggs are a cluster of white, yellow, or pink tiny circular things. I've found they connect their eggs to the side of the tank, or leave them in tiny crevices of decorations.

Loaches are good snail removers, but make sure you have food for them after they've rid the tank of snails.

As long as you use the ratio on the box of salt (it'll say _ tsp to _ liters of water), salt won't hurt live plants.

Manual removal. Take a blanched vegetable and stick it in the tank. Once the pest snails have gathered all over it, you can take out the vegetable with the snails.

You can gently wipe the eggs off the plants by using a cloth or paper towel. You can also use a salt dip to remove snail eggs from plants. Mix one cup of salt with a gallon of water and dip the leaves of the plant in the mixture for a few minutes. Do not let the roots touch the saltwater or it will damage them. Rinse the plant off in fresh water and return them to the tank. It's better to use kosher or aquarium salt, as other salts may have chemicals that can harm plants.

Yes, you can keep the snails if you want to. Be careful not to overfeed them as this can cause the snails to overpopulate and you might end up with more than you can care for.

Just about any sinking pellets, the type you feed fish. These are readily available in your local pet store. Snails will also be attracted to blanched vegetables, so that is another option.

If you ever worry about anything like this, you need to first of all clean your water and then you should try feeding them more healthy options or look for a better option. Also yes, it will harm your snails. Remember to feed them a form of calcium so they can stay healthy. Eexamples of foods to feed them with are: Algae, alginate and algae tablets, crushed shells, calcium supplements, live clams (carnivorous snails), brine shrimp (carnivorous snails), feeder snails (carnivorous snails) and slow-sinking fish foods.

They will eat pest snails that are smaller than nerite snails. They cannot eat anything bigger than nerite snails.

It will most likely do damage to your filter. And assuming that the bleach gets sucked into the filter media, it won’t fully come out. And if you use it in another tank, it’ll most likely spread bleach water into the tank, killing your fish.

Yes, or the snail eggs. Even if you emptied the water 100% the eggs and snails can still be on the decor and the substrate or glass.

If the fish is already dead, then no need to use clove oil. Clove oil is for euthanizing fish.

It won't kill all of them. You shouldn't have drained all aquarium water. Fill back up with tap water treated. A good solution to this is purchasing an assassin snail.

Get an assassin snail or fish like yoyo loach. These eat these snails. Best of all is a pea puffer though you would need to research whether or not these would bother the frogs.

Albino red tale sharks like normal red tail sharks do not eat snails, but can help get rid of them as they do eat small amounts of algae as part of their omnivorous diet, thereby helping to remove a key part of the snail's diet.

You could take them out manually and relocate them to prevent a population that outgrows their tank.

You could pick them out by hand or use a chemical that can get through your filter, like copper sulfate. Just make sure you read the instructions carefully so as not to kill your fish.

It might, but you are better off using salt and taking the fish out for a few days. Follow the steps in the article above.

Keep an albino sailfin Pelco that is 5 cm long. After it cleans out all of the bad snails and algae, it should grow a lot longer.