Is there a loach that will eat pond snails but...

[sfjoyboy]

not Malaysian trumpet or red ramshorn snails? Seems unlikely but I thought I'd ask. I'm thinking maybe the MTS's will be ok as their shells are harder to crack. I used to have pea puffers and they never touched the MTS's.

Thanks

[andyroo]

Nope. MTS are popcorn once the loaches figure them out. A botia's head is a set of gasket lips attached to a heavy-duty vacuum pump purpose built to suck a snail out of the shell, so the strength of the shell is of no help. Deep gravel might help or mixed gravel and sand as the MTS live underground a lot of the time. Also some flat stones or bogwood should provide refugia underneath, as might well-rooted plants.

Having an a little more size and an opercular plate on the snail helps: nerites last for a while, but they are stressed and don't grow much and eventually give up (croak and get 'et, not necessarily in that order) though they might last a couple of years. Same for mystery snails.

[NancyD]

I have kuhlis, both p.oblonga & semicincta (I think) along with vaillantella maassi in with pond & MTS snails. There are several empty smaller pond snail shells (really bladder snails) each week but I never see MTS shells. I don't have large numbers of either. I don't know which loach eats them or if the snails are out competed for food by all the cherry shrimp etc. All the loaches are of the "snaky" types, not really known as snail eaters like botias. Botia will eat any snails as andyroo said.

Your best bet may be to crush the pond snails against the glass or bait them with veggies, remove & throw back any other type you want to keep. Go for control rather than elimination. Even in tanks with botias I have baby pond snails in the filters from surviving "treats". Ramshorns didn't do well for me the last time I tried to get a group going but that may have been from my soft water, now I raise the hardness a bit.