How can I get rid of trumpet snails

I have an outbreak of trumpet snails. Don't know where they came from (probably along with the water when I bought new fish). How do I kill all of them with natural methods other than by hand :)?

hmmm clown loaches are good at eating snails...

i vote a couple of loaches will do the trick

Too bad you're all the way in Southlake. My son's lil puffers would LOVE to dine on those. Plus we'd love to have a separate tank just to have a source of food for them.

Ummm...in my experience, once you have an infestation of MTS (malaysian trumpet snails), you pretty much are stuck with them. My best piece of advice: google MTS control and you'll find a plethora of folks who have had experience with them. They're extremely resilient so all you can really do is control them with natural predators like clown loaches (or any type of loach really...just depends on what fish you have them with). Certain cichlid species will eat snails as well. Also, be careful of overfeeding your fish. This will cause a bloom of snails too.

Best of luck to you...but unfortunately, you're pretty much stuck with them. :)

LadyAqua. I have zillions of them in my tanks at our store. I'll sell you some really cheap if you want to come pick them up. We're just in Euless, TX about 15 mins. away. Then you can start your own culture of them.

Well on the good side, I hear they're very good algae eaters!

Well clown loaches be OK with frontosa and victorian cichlids?


Yeah. they have really kept my glass much cleaner than before from algae.

Hopefully someone else can answer that one. I'm not sure about the compatibility as I'm much of a cichlid hobbyist.

edit: NOT much of a cichlid hobbyist.

puffers have a tough time with tumpett snails... shells are extremely tough...

i dont have enough MTSs in my tank! i luv the burrowing lil buggers, i need more to help nutrify my sandy substrate so i can get my planted tank started. i dont even have any snail eaters in my tank and im not getting any visual "out breaks", maybe i should throw in half a block on chopped spinach i bought from WinCo. To me MTSs are god's gift to a clean tank

Kasshan: so your MTS aren't running rampant? I had a bout of them once, thought they should be given a chance, but then they started to multiply insanely. I wanted to keep them, but when they started to multiply the babies would easily get caught in my glass cleaner and scratch the glass, and then they'd get sucked up in my canister filter and grow in there somehow. They didn't even clean my algae! I did the clown loach thing and they were gone in about a month. Could they be some other king of trumpet shelled snail?

they are definately MTSs being a biologist i used a clade-guide to speciate them out, i think my problem is im under feeding the tank lol. i think i need to dump more food and plant-matter in my tank. here is a good site for snails http://www.ehow.co.uk/facts_5480116_types-aquarium-snails.html

Biologists unite! The ones I had were black, not the light colored ones with striations. I am planning a natural planted tank with shrimp only, and maybe some MTS in there would be ok if they hitch hiked.

Anyone know of any type of african cichlid that will eat trumpet snails?

CajunGator wrote:

puffers have a tough time with tumpett snails... shells are extremely tough...

Exactly.

I would bait them and then offer them to others. MTS are very beneficial in the aquarium as the keep the substrate stirred up.

I have a serious MTS problem. Even the clown loaches couldn't keep up. They are pretty but man can they reproduce!