Help with snails

[ineke]

My 980 tank is heavily planted and is overrun with snails - plus my growing colony of CRS. I plan to pull it down next week , put in new substrate and re plant it. What is the best way to treat the plants to get rid of snails that will not affect the shrimp. As the plants can be treated separately - the shrimp will be in a different tank for a week to allow the tank to go through a mini cycle - I want a reasonably aggressive attack on the snails. I haven't looked at any treatments as they are all unsafe for shrimp so any help would be greatly appreciated. I have fought this war for 2 years now with nightly snail squishing - the shrimp love to eat them but I just can't get on top of them and they are now starting to eat my plants.

[inverted]

Get an assassin snail....

[ineke]

 LOL yes that's the way to go. Are they legal here? I know one was up for auction last week but I didn't know if they are allowed? I think I need a more orthodox way Inverted

[Disciple]

Get an assassin snail....

Now that would be a snail I would like to have...

[Zorba]

I don't like snails. I have used Blue Planet Snail Rid , which is available from The Tech Den with absolute success. I treat the plants in a bucket and then wash them very well in clean water. I have had NO livestock deaths to this date

I have never seen a snail survive from this treatment

It would probably kill shrimp if it is not washed out thoroughly as it contains copper which is harmful to shrimp. The only other way for snail removal is physical , using snail traps , piece of cucumber etc , or crushing that I can think of

Many will say don't use it but it has worked for me

Happy to answer any other questions about it

Good luck

[ineke]

Thank you Zorba. I'm a bit worried about using snail rid with plants intended for the shrimp tank especially as it's such a large number of plants . I'm not sure how I could rinse them completely clean of the product. If it was just a few plants it probably would be easier but with so many plants if each had just a small amount of product left on them it might be enough to be toxic. 

[jc12]

I have used a 10% bleach solution with good results, for both algae and snails. I then washed and soaked the plants thoroughly for a few days. However, certain plants melt after the treatment but most bounced back after a few weeks. All my subwassertang melted though. Hope you could get on top of your snail problem. 

[ineke]

Thanks that might be worth a try. I think possibly H 2 O2 might work the same. I might try a few plants and see. It's mostly swords , crypts and Java fern plus a few different stem plants and moss. 

[jc12]

The plants that melted but bounced back were Amazon swords, crypts and Aponogeton Crispus. Just root tabs for them. Good luck. :-)

[ineke]

Thank you  I'm going to give the bleach a go as I can soak the plants in dechlorinator afterwards. I am not brave enough to use the snail rid -wish i was though