Snails...

Same happened to me in my 180ltr after I added plants.  Once the population of snails got to 50 (that I could readily count) I added 6 Assassin Snails.  The pond snail population has been cut right down to at best 10 over a few weeks.  They will eat one a day and bury themselves somewhere and "go to sleep". I now look at the Pond Snails as "live food" and leave them alone for the Assassins to feed off.

When the pond snails breed (and they will) you could find yourself having an explosion, if you do not actively seek out egg sacks and destroy them, along with any infant snails you can see.

The alternative to killing them is to grab an Assassin snail or two and pop them in.  Assassin's don't breed like the pest snails do (which can switch gender and breed readily).  Assassins are gender based and can't switch.  Unlike pest snails, if you do happen to get baby Assassin's they can be sold on quite readily.

Thanks for your posts guys... since my tank is so small it would be pretty bad news if my snails started overpopulating!

So... today at feeding time (and my endlers were pretty hungry, since I'd been at work for 38 hours so they'd had two full fasting days) I saw my endlers harassing.... yup, another snail! So I braved it, turned all of the electrics off and squashed it against the glass. My endlers swarmed around it and it was eaten in seconds! I'm really really hoping that this snail was on his lonesome, but well... I now know that they're a bit of an endler delicacy so will try to remember that to get rid of the guilt of killing them!

I do quite like the idea of having an assassin snail though, but I guess my tank is probably populated enough currently! I saw another shrimp shell earlier so one of my shrimps is currently in hiding... I really want to see some little shrimpy babies!

I do quite like the idea of having an assassin snail though, but I guess my tank is probably populated enough currently!

You would be perfectly ok as Assassins (or other types of "nice" snails) are treated much like Shrimp for bio-loading. Their impact is very small as they are eating what is already in the tank. It's always an option you can turn to later if you don't think you need/want to at the moment.

Thanks for your posts guys. And Melanie thank you for the warning on assassins eating shrimps... snails eating shrimps - I wouldn't have even thought to worry about that! I'll leave my tank be for the time being and take further steps if need be if I see another snail. I may have gotten lucky and the snail I squashed earlier could have been the same snail I saw last night and the only one in my tank... fingers crossed!

And thank you RE: shrimp bioload. I was worried I might get to a stage where I have too many shrimp and need to ship some off to new homes, but hopefully in that case I won't! I'm hoping they breed mainly because I think it would be cute to see some shrimp babies more than anything else ha, but I've also read that if they're 'happy' then they're very likely to breed, so that would be a nice sign they're happy in their new home. I have noticed the shrimps have really reddened up in the last week or so too (well apart from the boy!) so we'll see if I get any baby shrimps some time down the line

Hi all,
Tigzfish – I do feel interrogated, which feels rather strange after more than 25 years in fishkeeping (albeit, with lengthy breaks...) 
So, Interrogation Officer, in my defence, I can report the following:
PFK article is in February 2013 issue, page 108.
Googling the question, you may find that there are reports on instances of Assassins eating dwarf shrimp. Not everybody experience that but I am under the impression that the smaller the tank the higher is the risk. As this site does not allow references to other forums, I am afraid, Officer, you need to do your own “googling”.
The last (not the least) is a video of a cherry shrimp in a vulnerable state of moulting – being caught and eaten by an Assassin snail (Jesnon, this is a fairly disturbing video – even moulting itself does not look that pleasant – I braced myself watching it – but unfortunately, this is a truth of nature).
Here it goes: #Invalid YouTube Link include https#
I hope I covered my point of view well... Remaining at your mercy....

Hi Jesnon,
Unpleasant as it is, I think just crushing the pest snails against the glass will possibly be a better option for your little tank... Your endlers will love them as a natural food supplement.... 

Hey TigzFish...what's happened?  Why are you showing as a guest?  I hope you haven't left the forum? 

Resa