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Aquarium guides/Pest snails

Pest snails: bladder, ramshorn and trumpet snails

Small snails that suddenly cover the glass are usually bladder, ramshorn or Malaysian trumpet snails that came in on plants. They eat leftover food, algae and dead leaves, so a boom means there is more food than the tank needs. Feed less, remove snails by hand or with a lettuce trap, and add assassin snails if you want a steady control.

Pest snails: bladder, ramshorn and trumpet snails
Photo: Dat doris, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Which snails they are

  • Bladder snails: small, thin, teardrop-shaped shells that coil to the left; very fast breeders.
  • Ramshorn snails: flat, coiled shells like a ram’s horn.
  • Malaysian trumpet snails: pointed cone shells; they burrow in sand by day, which keeps it turned over.

All three are harmless to fish and most plants, and many keepers want a few as a clean-up crew. Types of aquarium snails.

Keep the numbers down

  1. Feed less: the snail population follows the food.
  2. Trap them: a blanched lettuce or cucumber slice overnight, lifted out in the morning with the snails on it.
  3. Pick or scrape bladder and ramshorn snail egg clutches off the glass. Trumpet snails bear live young, so for them feeding less and trapping do the work.
  4. Assassin snails hunt other snails and breed slowly.
  5. Snail-eating fish such as dwarf chain loaches or pea puffers suit only tanks planned for them.

Avoid treatments that kill snails in a tank with shrimp or the snails you want to keep; a mass die-off fouls the water. Rinse new plants, or buy tissue-culture plants, to keep snails out in the first place.

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