Loaches Online Forum

Here's a question, possibly even a dumb one:
Is there any way to STOP botia-types from eating snails?
I've found a great little snail that eats all my naughty stringy algae problem but they last minutes to hours in the tank, and that's only if there's just been a good feeding.
I'm breeding plenty of these snails in a fishbowl next to the main tank... there is sustainable supply.
Suggestions?
:)
I suppose i'll just have to hunt around for bigger/tougher snails. There are nerites, big endemic trumpets and mystery in the river.
A

andyroo wrote:Here's a question, possibly even a dumb one:
Is there any way to STOP botia-types from eating snails?
I've found a great little snail that eats all my naughty stringy algae problem but they last minutes to hours in the tank, and that's only if there's just been a good feeding.
I'm breeding plenty of these snails in a fishbowl next to the main tank... there is sustainable supply.
Suggestions?

I suppose i'll just have to hunt around for bigger/tougher snails. There are nerites, big endemic trumpets and mystery in the river.
A

The only way to stop them is to isolate them.

No "Cesar Millan" loach-whisperer out there looking to sell me a training muzzle and a DVD?

Even the smallest loaches can decimate a colony of snails. I recently had to move two small clown loaches out of my paludarium sump because they nearly wiped out all the ramshorn snails. I had atleast 100 ramshorns in there, but only about a dozen now.

You could try a tank divider, but I think the snails would figure out how to get around it and into dangerous territory. It would keep the fish out of a specific area while the snails did their clean up.