What gets rid of snails????

[JadeAnnette]

Ive come to notice that there is heaps of little snails in my tank but i dont know where they came from! i was thinking they maybe came off some of the plants ive bought and although theyre cute theyre seems to be more and more every week! i want to know if there are any fish or anything that will eat the snails but leave the axies be, i dont mind losing a few fish as long as they wont hurt my babies ? i know everyone says not to mix breed or anything but i believe its only natural for them to eat fish so i dont mind losing some if theyre doing the job, please no comments telling me not to do it i know the risks ?

 

[Donna001]

In a normal fish tank the easiest way to deal with pest snails is with the introduction of assassin snails.
For an axolotl tank I would suggest just manually removing the snails as you see them.

 

[Jort]

Are you sure you want to get rid of them? I love snails due to the fact that they eat debris and dead plant material. A lot of keepers I know here even introduce snails to their setup, like Niels D does. The feces of snails is easier for microbes to process that the debris and dead material it eats.

If you get too many you can always manually remove them.

 

[Blackbun]

Hi JadeAnnette, do you know what genus, or even species they are? Are they the relatively soft shelled animals which are active during the day or the hard shelled snails active at night? After dark, take a torch to your tank and have a check. The day snails likely came from plant introduction whereas the night snails, which hide in the gravel, came from your substrate.

Please don't be tempted to use mollusicides. For me, I'd pick them out. Soaking gravel in hot water works but I'd not use that method as it destroys the nitrifying bacteria there which acts like a huge biological filter. A friend of mine, bought some loaches. This group of fish specialise in predating snails. I'd not recommend this as axolotls, newts etc prefer cooler water.