6 Tips For Aquarium Snail Control Without Chemicals

Aquarium snail control is a problem a lot of fish hobbyists might have encountered.   At first, you might notice only one or two tiny snails in your fish tank.  You have no idea where they come from.  Before you know it, they multiply like crazy and overrun the entire aquarium with hundreds.  What are they? How did it happen?

What are these pest snails?

In most cases, they are pond snails.  There are also other species of aquatic snails can become the little pest in your aquarium.  We will stick with pond snail today as it is the most cases.  The same snail control methods apply to all of them.

Pond snails are hermaphrodites.  It means they do not have separated sex.  Each one of them has both male and female reproductive organs.  Any two of them can mate, and both will lay dozens of eggs each time.  Then the dozens offspring will grow up quickly, and all of them can mate with each other to lay even more eggs.  It is how their population explode so quickly.

How did they get in the fish aquarium?

Many aquarium hobbyists have introduced these uninvited guests to their fish aquarium unintentionally.  The eggs of pond snail are quite tiny and hard to notice.  They might have come into the fish tanks from the water came with the fish.  Sometimes the aquatic plants, decoration you bought have snail eggs attached.  It is one of the reasons why it is the best to ditch all the water came with the fish.  Do not let a drop into the home aquarium.  We must also wash the aquatic plants and decorations thoroughly with running water before putting them to use.  It is highly recommended to use a quarantine tank first.

How to stop the pest snails

1. Stop Overfeeding Fish will Slow the Population Growth of Pond Snails

To be honest, when you have a pond snail infestation, you must have an overfeeding problem.  Even if you think you are not feeding your fish too much food, there must be a surplus somehow.  While pond snails are not picky eaters, they will multiply the fastest when there is a surplus of fish food available.  In the wild, they mostly eat algae.  When there is more nutritious fish food available, they will be all over it.

Reduce feeding fish will limit the food source available to the pond snails.  Without a surplus of fish food, their population growth will slow or stall.

To make sure you are not overfeeding your fish, you need only to feed them once a day with no more food than they can finish within a minute.  Immediately remove all leftover fish food you can see right after the feeding.  You can quickly remove all floating uneaten fish food with a fishnet.  A gravel vacuum is excellent for removing the fish food at the bottom.

If the pond snail problem is severe, you may want to skip on feeding fish for a few days.  No harm will come to the fish.  They will be perfectly fine without food for even weeks.

Reduce feeding might not be a solution in case there are bottom feeders.  I have both corydoras catfish and Otocinclus catfish in my community tank.  As a result, I have to give them sinking algae wafer, or they might starve.  The pond snails were taking advantage of the bottom feeder foods.  When it was dinner time for the corydoras catfish and Otocinclus catfish, it was also a buffet for the pond snails.  They would come from all directions to converging on the algae wafer.  So they always had plenty of food thanks to the bottom feeders.  Do your best not to give too much food to even the bottom feeders.  Make sure they finish the meal in less than an hour.  Ideally, aim for 30 minutes or less.  Remove the remaining food with a gravel vacuum as soon as the bottom feeders no longer show any interest

2.  Keep the Aquarium Algae Free will Further Cut off the Food Source for Pond Snails

Algae on the surface of objects in the water are the natural food source for pond snails.  When there is no more surplus fish food for them, they will fall back to their second favorite food.  Keep the aquarium algae free is important to cut off the backup food source for the pest snails.  Therefore, algae control will help the aquarium snail control.

For algae control in a home aquarium, you may want to limit the light exposure to your fish tank.  Reduce feeding fish will help.  More frequently partial water change can also remove the nutrients the algae need to grow.

And finally, you may want to use an algae scraper to physically remove the algae on the side of the fish tank.  Wash all the decoration under tap water to remove the algae from them.

3.  Physical Removal of the Pond Snails can directly Reduce Their Numbers

You can, of course, use your hand to physically remove the pond snails one at a time from your fish tanks.  It is the simplest way to reduce what you can see.  However, I have been through this during my newbie year of fish keeping.  I could remove 50+ pond snails manually with my hands every day without noticing a decreasing in their population.  It goes back to the earlier point of reducing their food source.  If you do not limit the available food to them, they will multiply quicker than you can remove them.  Physical removal works only if their growth has stalled, or if their number is still small.

You may also use a piece of vegetable to set a trap.  Anything from a piece of lettuce, cucumber, zucchini, can all work the wonder.  Just cut a piece of veggie with large surface and place it at the bottom of the fish tank.  In a few hours, you will see a high concentration of pond snails on the vegetable.  Remove the whole piece of veggie will remove dozens of them each time.  Repeat the process, and you should see a decrease in pond snail population.  It is undoubtedly more efficient than removing them one at a time by hand.

Since the pond snails reproduce by laying eggs, we can also remove some of the eggs during aquarium maintenance.  When we do a partial water change, extensive vacuuming will also remove the snail eggs.  Removed water can reduce free floating snail eggs.  We can wash the decorations under running water to get rid of the snail eggs attached to them.  Filter media might also contain some of the snail eggs took in by the filter system.  Wash the filter media gently by using aquarium water conditioner treated water or old tank water.  Do not use untreated tap water to avoid damaging the good bacteria colony.

4.  Introduce Natural Predators for Aquarium Snail Control.

There are some natural predators you can introduce to your fish aquarium to help with the pond snail control.  Assassin snail is on my top list.

 The following is a video of Assassin Snail in action.  

The Assassin Snails have separate male and female.  And they only lay a few eggs each time.  It means they might not even reproduce in your fish aquarium unless there are both male and female available.  If they do breed, the number is manageable due to their slow reproduction.  It is important to know they will not become a pest themselves in the long run.  All you need is a few of them.  Around 3 to 6 of Assassin snails will be just fine for pond snail control.  Each of them will eat at least one pond snail per day.  It might not seem much at first.  But the number adds up quickly.   For each one pond snail consumed, you have prevented all of the potential offsprings.

As a plus, the assassin snails are beautiful creatures themselves.  A great addition to your home aquarium.  Once the pond snails are all gone, they can adapt to other diets easily.  Any bottom feeder fish food and even algae can sustain them.  They will also eat meaty food like bloodworm.

 

Assassin snails are also harmless to everything else.  They will not harm the fish, nor shrimp, nor any other larger species of aquatic snails you intentionally placed in your aquarium.  They ignored my Zebra Nerite Snails completely which is a larger, beautiful aquatic snail species for algae control.

There are other natural predators of pond snails including crown loach, pufferfish, convict cichlid.  These are fish.  So they have much higher bioload than the small assassin snails.  Do not overstock your fish tank just for snail control.  You might also want to check fish compatibility issue.  Some of the fish might not be friendly to others.  Unless you want these fish in the first place, it is a much better choice to get the assassin snails instead.

However, if you have a large community aquarium with the extra room for more inhabitants.  Having multiple aquatic species eat snails in the same fish tank will double and triple the effort.

5.  Stay Away From Chemicals when it Comes to Aquarium Snail Control

There are some pest snail killing chemical products available for aquarium use.  Stay away from them.  Since they can kill the pest snails, they can indeed kill pet snails, shrimp, and scaleless fish.  The meds can also be harmful to other fish and live plants in your fish tank.  So let’s stick with the natural snail control solutions just to be safe.

6.  Aquarium Snail Control Require Patience and Consistency

There is no single solution to the pest snail problem if you can already see hundreds of them.  You might need to do all the recommended methods at the same time.  And it takes a while to put a stop to the little pests.

You must also be very patient.  It won’t be over until it is over.  My pond snail infestation did not seem to end at first.  The fact I had to feed the bottom feeders made it worse.  I was taking out dozens and dozens of them each day.  And I have added six assassin snails in the tank. I saw first hand how an assassin snail ate a pond snail.  It was amazing.  More and more empty shells of pond snail started to appear at the bottom of the fish tank.  However, a general view of the fish tank did not seem to have solved the problem.  There were still hundreds of pond snails in my sight.

Then, all the sudden the snails are noticeably getting fewer and fewer.  Eventually, there was no more pond snail in my fish tank.  Not a single one left.

So you see, as long as you keep doing the right things, aquarium snail control will eventually work.   It just takes time for the natural methods to take effect.