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Hi, Ive been searching the forums to find a DIY solution to snails and Ive read that copper pennies when placed in a filter help remove snails. I cant get a hold of copper pennies or any copper coins, So i just want to know if copper piping cut into small amounts and placed in my canister would have the same affect as pennies? could this treatment kill/harm my fish? If this is a way of controlling my snail outbreak how much copper would you suggest to add to my filter? I have a bottle of snail remover and it says the active constituent is copper sulphate thats why i have intrest in adding copper to my filter.I also have tannins and Iam considering adding seachem's Purigen to my canister, Would purigen remove the copper from the water? and my tank is a 55gal. ( please give me a slap in the face if iam wrong about all this copper business )

Copper will kill the snails but the problem in dosing copper with coins or with thinwall is that you do not know the dose that you are adding to your aquarium. Oh, copper can be toxic to plants and fish in addition to those sensitive mollusks!

A better solution would be a natural solution. Freshwater puffers and yoyo loaches come to mind as snail eaters. Secondarily, snails need hard water to form shells. You may want to drop your KH for a month or two by using RO to dilute your tap water during your water changes.

Both solutions are less toxic and, in one case, more entertaining, than turning your aquarium into a copper pit.



__________
"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research."
researched from Steven Wright

If you are going to dose with copper get a copper med. My suggestion is cupramine by seachem which unlike some other copper treatments does not get left behind in the decorations or substrate and is easily removed by chemical filtration. It was very effective when I treated for leeches and a few days after running chemical filtration I had ghost shrimp in the tank. Some treatments will cause enough copper to be left behind that you can't add any snails or shrimp again without a long treatment with chemical filtration that specifically absorbs copper. Throwing in random bits of copper material is going to possibly kill your fish(in high enough amounts copper is toxic to anything) and probably leave that residue behind for quite awhile. A controlled dose with cupramine will not kill your fish and will easily be completely removed afterward. You do still have to remove any desireable inverts like shrimp when treating with copper.

Problem 2 with dosing copper is that all the snails will die at once. The result is often a huge ammonia spike killing all your fish. That's why copper is usually the last line of defence when you just can't stand the snails and no other method will work in your situation.

Purigen will remove most forms of copper and do so more effectively than carbon but remember some copper treatments can leave residues behind on the decorations or substrate and take awhile to leach back out.

The most effective and safest way to get rid of snails would be to add a few loaches or if your tank is too overstocked as is to house them longterm borrow someone's baby clown or yoyo loach. Puffers love snails but eventually they go after fish fins and will end up killing something in your tank if you don't have anything big enough to kill them first.

thanks for the help, So Im now going to add a snail eating fish but Im not sure which one(s), my current stock listing = 3 zebra danios, 3 white clouds, 6 red blue Colombian tetras, 2 rummy nose tetras, 1 albino cory and a BN. So what fish would you recommend I add even if they don’t eat snails because I would like some more fish anyway.

3-4 yoyos would work. They are really hyper and cover all areas of the tank so they are quite interesting to watch. They are also one of the best snail eaters I've had them keep a 90g completely clear of snails.