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Snails - And What To Do With Them!

Many aquarists find snails appearing in their aquaria, sometimes attaining plague proportions, and want to know how to deal with them. Well, there are several methods one can adopt for this purpose, which I shall now cover for your delight and delectation!

The first option is, of course, just to leave them alone. After all, snails can have their uses. In the days before Corydoras catfishes appeared in the hobby in anything like the kind of numbers they do now, when the venerable Innes book first appeared, snails were deliberately introduced for scavenging purposes. Snails will home in on uneaten food with almost laser-guided accuracy, albeit a little slowly (!), and some snails will also help keep certain nuisance algae controlled. More recently, keeping certain snail species in their own right has become desirable, to provide all those Tnaganyikan shell-dweller Cichlid keepers happy: the ideal snails for shell-dwelling Cichlids are, of course, those found in their natural habitat, belonging to various Neothauma species, and I have made remarks in the past to the effect that cultivating Neothauma snails to provide a collection of homes for shell-dwellers is something that might prove fairly lucrative to anyone with the necessary starting capital. Who knows, Neothauma snails may also prove to be lucrative as a subsititute for the edible snails found in French restaurants, thus allowing a Neothauma farm to make a double financial killing, so to speak! An idea worth trying out sometime, I think

However, snails are certainly NOT welcome in breeding aquaria used for propagating egg-laying fish species, as the snails will almost certainly devour any fish eggs that they chance upon. So, aquarists with a 'snail problem' will want to get rid of them. How do you do this?

In the case of Malaysian Livebearing Snails, this is simple. Just bait some containers and fish them out. I once introduced these into my aquarium because they looked interesting, only to find that their reproductive powers were considerable. However, when I decided to fish them out, it didn't take long to remove them completely. Baiting assorted containers as traps over a period of a week to 10 days should ensnare all of the snails in this case, and is a useful way of reducing the numbers of other, egg-laying snail species. The problem with these, of course, is precisely that they lay eggs, which sit there ticking like a time bomb waiting to go off. So even if you remove egg-laying snails on a regular basis, new ones keep coming back to haunt you. Worse still, the eggs tend to be coated in protective gelatinous substances, which as anyone who has experienced a snail plague will know, are very effective at said egg protection duty!

Well, after baiting traps and removing large numbers of adults, one solution (pardon the pun) is to add Copper Sulphate to the aquarium in small doses. As any marine aquarist will tell you, invertebrates are far more sensitive to copper toxicity than fishes - hence all those copper-based medications for diseases such as Oodinium, diseases caused by a range of invertebrate pathogens such as dinoflagellates. Indeed, King British, an aquarium supply company here in the UK, markets bottles of Copper Sulphate under the trade name of "Snail Terminator" for this very purpose. This is a distinctive blue colour, different from that of Methylene Blue (a dye also used extensively as a fish medicine because it is effective at eliminating White Spot, for example), and used to appear in chemistry sets in phials containing the distinctive sky-blue crystals. Nowadays, I suspect that chemistry sets are no longer marketed for children, given that we now live in an age where schools issue protective goggles for games of conkers (sigh), but those of us who grew up and lived quite happily without such nannying will remember the existence of chemistry sets - ah, nostalgia! But I digress. Basically, Copper Sulphate is chosen because it has a reasonable level of solubility, the dosage can be controlled to a fair degree of precision without the need for an 'A' level in chemistry, and its colour, once seen, is unmistakable. One problem with many copper salts, of course, is that they are only sparingly soluble in water, and precipitate out. This mitigates against its use in aquaria such as Rift Lake aquaria, whose alkaline chemistry will result in the formation of sparingly soluble Copper Hydroxide, but in such aquaria snails are unlikely to be a major problem.

Moreover, baiting traps for snail removal will still have to be done prior to the use of copper to wipe out the snail population. The reason is simple, and should be obvious. First, the snails will have been keeping uneaten fish food levels down, and thus making some contribution to aquarium cleanliness. Second, when they are gone, that contribution will cease, and adjustment will have to be made to the feeding régime if an unwanted ammonia spike is to be avoided. Third, a sudden wipeout of snails will result in the presence of numerous rotting corpses in the aquarium (never a good idea) with the ammonia spike joys that will follow if numbers are not reduced by trapping beforehand. The combination of leftover food no longer being eaten by the snails, and a large number of dead snails rotting away, will almost certainly result in fish deaths too if measures are not taken to reduce the impact of such a large scale change in the aquarium ecosystem in such a short time. There are better ways!

Speaking of said 'better ways', if like me, you prefer an 'eco-friendly' solution that doesn't involve adding toxic chemicals to the aquarium, no matter how precisely controlled the dose, unless it becomes a compelling necessity for disease treatment, there is a rather nice alternative. Acquire some fish to do the job for you! If you want a truly efficient snail controller, one that regards snails as lunch is, as might be expected, likely to prove resolutely efficient, relentless and unceasingly active at the task. So, find a fish that loves a snail lunch, and you're home and dry!

Now, the 'traditional' fish choice for snail disposal has been the Clown Loach, Botia macracantha. Not only is this fish an efficient consumer of snails, but it is also strikingly and beautifully marked. But, of course, Clown Loaches have one big disadvantage - size. They grow to be large, in Sumatra they reach 16 inches or so in length and at that size are sold as food fishes for humans. Only the small juveniles are exported for the aquarium trade. And, as yet, captive breeding of Clown Loaches, despite information to the contrary I was given about five years ago (apparently, Clown Loach farming has been tried, but with much less success than hoped for) has not yet been achieved to the extent of being commercially viable. Consequently, responsible fishkeepers now avoid this species unless they can house it in suitably large quarters on a long-term basis.

Other snail-devouring fishes include assorted Puffer Fishes. Not only are these fishes very well equipped for the task (those four teeth at the front of the mouth are very efficient shell crushers), they relish the task even more than Clown Loaches do. However, Puffers have several big disadvantages. Many are preferentially brackish water fishes, many of the exclusively freshwater species prefer hard, alkaline water, and while there are some Amazonian Puffers such as Colomesus asellus (about which I asked some compatibility questions in another thread), these are not yet particularly common in the hobby, and not that easy to obtain. Compatibility with existing fishes is also a major problem - many are inveterate fin-nippers that will shred Angelfish and Betta fins with little effort, quite a few are aggressive toward anything that moves (including their own species), and some of them grow to be big. There are one or two 'freshwater' Puffers that can reach two feet in length (I seem to recall that Tetraodon mbu is one of the big Puffers, and one with a nasty temper to boot) and even the small ones can be vicious if unwisely housed in the wrong setting. Indeed, Puffers are a fishkeeping world all to themselves, which is why they have their own special forum here on the Board!

However, all is not lost. There is one fish that remains small, can be introduced into a community aquarium, is compatible with a wide range of familiar (and not so familiar) aquarium species, is well behaved, and has a healthy appetite for snails. Botia sidthimunki, the Pigmy Chain Loach, is as yet the best snail-eating fish that has appeared in any numbers. Not only is it small and peaceful, it is also attractively marked, and has a certain droll quality to it that appeals greatly to specialist Loach fans, and even endears it to people like myself who are normally captivated by Corydoras. The only disadvantage I can find with this fish to date, is price. Botia sidthimunki is a small fish with a very big price tag for its size. £10 each here in the UK is a typical figure, and that is for small juveniles. To put it in prespective, I can obtain adult Corydoras barbatus and Corydoras panda for less, and these are fairly expensive Corys! Needless to say, as Botia sidthimunki fares best in a small group, shelling out £60 on six of these is a major investment. And, while these fishes are fairly tough, if they do succumb to any diseases such as White Spot, treating them is likely to be as fraught with difficulties as the treatment of Clown Loaches. However, given recent developments with respect to Clown Loach treatment (apparently they will develop an enhanced immunity to White Spot, for example, if exposed to this disease under carefully controlled conditions), it is possible that the same methods that work for 'toughening' Clown Loaches will work for Pigmy Chain Loaches too. I would certainly hope so, and furthermore hope that any Pigmy Chain Loaches I ever bought had been fortified against disease attack if I were to spend £60 on a group of them! But such considerations aside, Pigmy Chain Loaches are excellent choices for snail control, they will devour snails with undisguised relish, and were recommended for the purpose in the December 2003 edition of Practical Fishkeeping.

Another choice recommended in the same magazine (in their 'Ask the Experts' question and answer section on page 30) was the Candy Loach, Botia striata. This is a species I have not encountered, and therefore can only pass on the magazine's recommendation that it too is an efficient snail eater. However, one species which I have had some limited experience with, back in my teenage days, was Botia horae (or whatever it is now called - I suspect this one has suffered a name change). Botia horae will eat snails, but is unlikely to be encountered because even dedicated Loach fans regard it as the least attractive of the Genus, and I haven't seen it since those teenage days of mine. 'Nondescript' sums up its appearance well, but it has the twin advantages of being peaceful, and remaining fairly small, though it will still reach 4 inches if given enough space.

One other possibility cited in the Practical Fishkeeping answer to a reader's letter is Amblydoras catfishes. These smaller Doradids will apparently eat snails, and this leads me to speculate whether some other Doradid catfishes, such as Acanthodoras spinosissimus, the Talking Catfish, Platydoras costatus (which I believe is known as the Raphael Cat in the States) and the similarly coloured Orinocodoras eigenmanni would also eat snails. If these fishes also eat snails, then they provide Amazonian biotope keepers with a handy solution, although one that would have to be offset against the size of some of these Doradids, and their capacity to eat smaller aquarium fish companions. These catfishes would also be advantageous in aquaria housing boisterous Cichlids, as their armour would well and truly protect them from any unwelcome Cichlid attentions: Doradids are armoured like M1 Abrams main battle tanks, and further protected by multiple rows of spines that in the case of Acanthodoras spinosissimus, turn the fish into a kind of self-propelled spiked ball resembling that which was wielded on a chain in mediaeval combat, something that even the most aggressive of Cichlids will soon learn to avoid tangling with! Of course, if certain Doradids are acquired for snail control, then one of the side effects will be periodic emissions of grunting sounds from an aquarium whose pig population is zero, said sounds being emitted by the catfish, and loud enough to compete with a television set in the same room ... acquire these and the reason for their being called 'Talking Catfish' will become very readily manifest! Other than that, it is worth my asking keepers of the likes of Raphael Cats and other smaller Doradids to keep an eye on their charges: while many Doradids are normally nocturnal or crepuscular, aquarium specimens can learn to become active during more convenient hours for the aquarist, especially if a 'lights out' feeding régime is used to acclimatise them on introduction. If anyone out there with Doradid catfishes can photograph their fishes eating snails, so much the better - these fishes can then be added to the "eco friendly snail control list", as it were.

However, as a final word, given that Puffer Fishes not only eat snails with relish, but need to eat hard-shelled foods to keep their teeth trimmed, another solution for the aquarist with a snail problem is to team up with a friend who keeps Puffers, and supply him/her with a regular batch of snails, thus converting the 'problem' into an asset. Indeed, if I were to keep Puffers in the future, I would probably end up taking the snails from the Panda Cory aquarium and cultivating them in a separate refugium to keep the Puffers supplied. Plus, snails have a use even to the non-Puffer keeper during breeding time: many fish fry are small enough to need infusoria as a first food, and if these is one sure-fire way of speeding up an infusoria culture, drop some snails in with the boiled peas and the lettuce leaf - the infusorians will appear like magic. Several infusorians of importance to fish breeders as fry food undergo something of a mini population explosion in the presence of snail droppings (which they apparently feed upon, unpalatable as that sounds!) and reproduce rampantly when snails are added to an infusoria culture. Which of course makes them an asset to the fish breeder who knows this little trick. So, instead of eliminating the snails altogether, try putting them to work - it's more humane, more eco-friendly, and if there is a 'smart' solution to a pest problem, then harnessing that 'pest' to do useful work is the smartest option of all?


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

that was very well stated

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''All the clown fish and yellow tangs in the world cant save you now!''

Just wanted to say that Zebra Loaches are great snailers..and don't hurt plants like Clowns can..and, don't get so big so would even work for smaller aquariums. I just added 7 to my 125 gal and they've eliminated the mystery snails I was having a problem with.

Got a taxonomic name for those G_U_A_R?

Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Hmm...what about yoyo loaches, Botia lohachata? I've heard good things about them as snail eaters.

I really enjoyed this article, very informative !

I have to agree about clown loaches being effective snail eaters.. I had pond snails hitch-hike their way into my tank.. First a pair of yo-yo's which were effective, but gave the guppys a hard time, and totally eliminated any fish fry. I donated them to a friend the snails came back, I added 2 clown loaches.. I have one left, for months there has been not a snail seen..

Alot of people say they keep the CL's in the tank and just before they outgrow the tank they sell them or give back to the LFS.. Some people say this would be irresponsible, but I beg to differ.. There are so many people out there which will be happy to give one a good home. The only problem is if you keep a CL for any length of time, you will get attached to it. I have some damage on my plants which MIGHT be the CL, but it's more likely the few platys in there nibbling on the plants.. I've never seen the clown pay too much attention to plants, other than cruising around and thru them looking for food. If anyone knows for sure that a CL damages plants, I would like to know..

Also, a remarkable thing.. When my gold gourami was attacked by an SIA she developed some wounds and fungus on her head.. I would find the clown loach going up to it and 'nibbling' on the wounded area, for the most part, the gourami let him do it.. I'm sure this reduced the fungus and helped the gourami to heal, quite the symbiotic relationship similar to a shark which has a fish attached to it, the fish eats parasites off of the shark. I would've never believed a clown loach would be capable of this sort of thing.

The Amazon Nut...

I"m sorry..I haven't actually had clowns..but was going to get them for the big tank I mentioned. But i read a few places, including loaches.com and at plantedtank.net that they can and will damage plants to some degree.. That is my only basis for saying that, but I did get agreements from more than a few ppl that have had them saying they do.
Zebra loahces -Botia Striata
http://loaches.com/species_pages/botia_striata.html
Don't know how common they are..took my LFS a few weeks to be able to get ahold of some..so while not always seen I don't think they are rare. My LFS retailed them at $7.99 US.. They DO need the company of each other. At first I had 3..2 hid all the time..the third frantically looked for the other's all the time. When I added 4 more..they all became more visible..seemingling more comfy..having more of themselves.. They will group for a bit...but not all the time for sure. But I just know I see them all and they are all much more outgoing with the larger number. They are one fish that you have to be really still watching them eat..or photographing..you move and they dart away-but just for a few seconds.
And, don't get freaked out like I did when I first got them, but this is what happens (apparently) when they tackle and eat a larger snail..or have some other big meal:
http://mediaservice.photoisland.com/auction/Oct/200410194400507191516479.jpg

OT: I had an Oto do that to a wounded Pearl Gourami..suck the wound..didn't think about the cleansing affect.. (the wound was post mating I think incidentally).
I'm going to go look for the info I saw about clowns eating or "popping holes" in plants..

here's one story of it..
http://www.aquahobby.com/gallery/gclown.html
still looking..

Last edited by Lindy at 21-Oct-2004 06:47

http://tinyurl.com/6t64d
This is probly the main source..this is a great forum for loach lovers..
http://aquaweb.pair.com/forums/archives/loach6/index.cgi?read=79653

Last edited by girlunderrainbow at 19-Oct-2004 21:13

EDIT: had to make URL smaller as it was stretching the page right out!

Last edited by Callatya at 04-Nov-2004 00:50

Very informative article. Many thanks for that Calilasseia!

Just have one question. Would any of these loaches go after shrimps? Especially tha smaller varieties like Tiger and Cherry shrimps?

Last edited by cichlidmad at 20-Oct-2004 10:47

some people use snails in breeding tanks. to control waste and infusia feeds heavly on snail droppings.

there might be some snails that devour eggs. i use mystery snails in my breeding tank.

Thanks for all the info grlundrainbow ! Wow...

I was also thinking about Malaysian Trumpet snails since they benefit the substrate and don't damage the plants but when I decide to get them I won't have the clown probably..
So the population will get all out of whack..

I'm sure a clown or other loaches would love to get a shrimp, especially the larger ones.. Especially when the shrimp molts and is exposed. I'm sure Cal will know more about this. Cal ?

The Amazon Nut...

Hmm. Don't have much experience with shrimps other than the ones used for fish food, but I would hazard a guess that since Botia species like eating invertebrates including snails, shrimps might figure on their wild diet, and hence might be best avoided in a Botia aquarium. But this is one of my 'knowledge gaps', as it were, and I suspect that someone out there will probably come in here and say that they've successfully kept Botia species of various kinds with freshwater shrimps.

Mind you, I would imagine that even Clown Loaches would start snacking on shrimps once they grew past a certain size - don't forget 16 inches is a real possibility with these fishes if they have the space!

Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

I second the puffers. I go weekly to get the babys from th pet stores that do not want them. I am new to having puffers, but I really enjoy them. I like the curiosity of the fish. They are always looking at something up close and inspecting their surroundings.