Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => General Fishkeeping advice => Topic started by: Matt on May 03, 2020, 10:03:57 PM
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I thought it might be interesting to share knowledge and hopefully any experiences with snail eating fish.
I personally like my tank much more after adding my dwarf puffers which have very effectively dealt with the problem and I’m lucky enough that they are no trouble in the community either.
I’ve also heard of dwarf chain loach being good snail control but found it hard to find reliable first hand accounts of this... anyone out there got any experience with them and snails?
@LeakysLab also informed me recently that sparkling gourami are effective at snail control which are a fish I love and I’m excited to try this out again soon...
Any more experiences out there?
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I misinterpreted the title, fearing the potential for snails to consume fish. :yikes: In fact, I might modify the title to insert a hyphen to avoid similar interpretations. C:-)
I can't answer your question but just a forewarning for anyone reading this that sparkling gourami are also effective at shrimp control - I've read this several times.
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I have observed my Sparkling Gourami take on snails however I will mention that because of the fishes small size vs the bigger snails they are not interested. I’ve seen egg removal and young baby snails are virtually no more. Some have made it and live life left alone but the population is managed.
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I once had dwarf chain loaches, Ambastaiai sidthimunki. While did see a loach once or twice swimming round with a tiny ramshorn snail on its 'nose', they did not seem to make an appreciable difference to the snail population. I now also have physid snails, and have no idea whether the loaches would have eaten them.
But it is never a good idea to encourage anyone to get a fish just to eat snails. Most of the snail eating fish are on the large side and totally unsuitable for small tanks. Besides which, snails are an important part of a tank's ecosystem and people should be encouraged to keep snail numbers under control by feeding the fish less rather than buying a fish to solve a perceived problem.
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@Sue My shrimp population has grown in lieu of the snails and I’m very happy indeed about this as I love seeing them whereas I hated the snails. Do you believe these are playing the same important role as the snails? I much prefer to see my shrimp!!
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So-called pest snails eat just about everything in the tank and reduce it in size then bacteria and other micro-organisms reduce it further, but shrimps eat fish food and some algae. Once I discovered that snails are good for a tank I leave them be.
I have:
those tiny ramshorn snails
physid snails, often called pond snails
Malaysian trumpet snails
nerite snails