Snail traps and snail problems

Pete,

Put a small lettuce leaf in the tank and when snails gather on it, dispose of it. You will need to repeat several times and it may not get all the snails, but it works pretty well for population reduction.

I don't know about the snail eating properties of crabs, but I had some in my early fishkeeping days and they like to escape from the smallest gap in the hood. I kept sealing the holes and they kept getting out. One AM I found one running across my kitchen floor. I stopped keeping them, they must need some dry land.

Pete, AN easy and effective snail trap is to take a saucer and the yolk o an egg. Break the yolk and paint the inside of the saucer with it. Place it in the microwave for a few seconds till it is baked on hard. Then place it in the aquarium overnight when the lights are out. First thing next morning simply lift it out with the snails in the saucer. Keep repeating this each night till you stop catching any more snails.

Cheers John

Thanks for everyone's advice! I think I've read all the posts so I'm going to try a few ideas. A lot of suggestions were for snail-eating fish such as clown loaches etc. I already have these in my community tank and they do a fine job, but I'm not sure about adding them to a tank with territorial cichlids? I had already thought about this option and ruled it out due to the aggressive and territorial nature of the cichlids. Does anyone have this experience?

I've already been trying the film cannister approach and it seems to work well. I also took an old medium-sized flake food plastic cannister and put some small holes in this. Weighted it down with a small rock inside and just left it on the surface of the substrate with some algae wafers inside overnight. In the morning, there were over 200 snails in it!

I like the idea of the puffer. I think they look beautiful, and I've never had one, so I might try that so long as it doesn't get terrorised by the cichlids. Does anyone know if a puffer will be happy in a 3' setup of rocks and substrate (and snails!) with hard water and a pH of 8.5-9.0?

Thanks all once again!

I had a snail infestation in my Malawi tank. On the recommendation of my LFS, I picked up a synodontis eurystomus and a synodontis multipunctatis. The next day there were no snails to be seen. I'm sure there are still some in the tank, but so few that I don't see them in the daytime. Both catfish are known for eating snails and insects, so I'm not sure if one is better than the other, but they definitely did the trick.