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Oh boy I have a lot (I mean alot) of snails in my community tank, and if you read this thread, http://www.fishprofiles.com/files/forums/Breeding%20Advice/67401.html?200512250952
it seems that I have more coming soon!
I would love to get a couple of yoyo loaches, but I'm afraid that they will eat the shrimp that I have in the tank as well as the snails.
Any advice???

Almost forgot - I have a 38 gal, with 5 lemons, 5 harlies, 3 ottos, 3 pandas (hoping to get more), a bunch of different shrimp, and a whole lotta snails.

Last edited by misty7 at 27-Dec-2005 11:58

hmm, i have a loach that eats snails (i actualy have piles of snail shells in that tank lol) but im not sure of the species i will get pics later, maybe your lfs has something like it, he is over 1 year old and is still at 4in, when i bought him he was more like 2in he was kept in a 10 gallon for a bit, but now he is in my 20 high and thriving!

Angels are supposed to be real good with snails. So are puffers.

Inky

I've got a queen botia in my community with ghost shrimp - snails are *way* down (still have some bigger ones) and the shrimp are fine.

If you want to get rid of the snails, just add a Clown Loach & he'll do the rest.


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I have snails in my tank and have a breeder tank for them but when i get to many i just get the net and fish em out and well this sounds kinda nasty and mean but i squash them and feed them to my sisters goldfish its a treat to them and give some to my ghost shimp that like them too. but those eggs in your thread are snail eggs in deed and you will have LOTS more, i usually just wait until alot are at the top of glass and pull them off glass and put into my 1 gallon until its time to feed them to sisters fishes, the loach idea is good they like snails too, my brother had one in his tank and it got pretty big anout 11' long i use to give it snails to but his doesnt have it anymore so i feed his oscars that like them too.

i too had this problem, i reluctantly added 2 2inch Clown Loaches and in about a week most of the really tiny snails had gone. however i too had soo many snails i could only expect 2 sml loaches to eat so many a week! its been about 4 weeks now and ive still got a snail problem, the larger snails the loaches leave so far and it looks like snails are still breeding like mad as i have regular batches of baby snails. i ghess the loaches will catch up sooner or later but i really needed to get more to get a quick fix solution. my tank is 54 tall and heavily planted, the loaches dont wreck my delicate plants so im overall happy with them /:'

My yoyo loaches never went after ghost shrimp or rainbow shrimp size but would probably eat midget shrimp and baby shrimp. Not entirely sure on that one. Angelfish will definitely go after shrimp if they see them and puffers not only have a chance of going after shrimp but are not good community tank fish. They have a high chance of going after everyone's fins as well. If you have a huge snail population boom then you are probably overfeeding the tank or something died and kept them fed. Snails multiply based on the amount of food.

To completely eliminate pest snails without adding loaches I added a more desireable type of snail to my 90g. The tank is filled with various colors of malaysian trumpet snails which being livebearing snails the egglaying snails didn't stand a chance of outcompeteing them. Trumpet snails also don't multiply quite as much as some pest snails but with too much excess food and waste in the tank for the snails to eat pretty much all species have the ability to multiply out of control. MTS are also more nocturnal so even when you have alot you won't see many. They won't touch plants and they do a great job of stirring the substrate which is where they spend most of their time. I bought different colored ones off aquabid.com and within the week there were no more pest snails. All pest snail eggs were eaten and the MTS even attacked some pest snails and ate them directly.

Yeah, I probably have been overfeeding a little- once the shrimp had young, I started leaving extra algae wafers for them at night.

So, I might be able to get away with the yoyo loaches, if I wait for the latest round of babies to get a little bigger. And the malaysian trumpet snails sound like an excellent choice too - thanks Sham! I'll have to see what's available at the LFS.

Lol - I just looked over at the tank, and there's a shrimp floating through the top of the tank, and two of the pandas are following it, playing tag - too cute!

Last edited by misty7 at 27-Dec-2005 20:29

I had Yoyo Loaches to eat Snails, but nothing beats a Clown Loach.



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thanks jason, but I think a clown would be too big for my tank, and it would be very likely to eat my shrimp. Nice looking fish, though.