Lazy loaches not eating snails

[Soujirou]

When I first started my tank I had a huge snail problem before I had any fish since they ate my plants. After a couple months I purchased dwarf loaches and they wiped them out. It's probably been a month since I purchased them and the snails have made a big comeback.

The loaches still seem to go through the driftwood and plants as if they were looking for snails to eat, but I haven't seen any empty shells. If I pick off a big snail and drop it in front of them, they will eat it immediately. However I can't grab every snail and do that for them, and they had no problem in the past eating the smallest snails.

So does anyone have any ideas on what I should do? My first thought would be to stop feeding them and having them skip a day of feeding is probably good for them, but it doesn't seem to encourage them to eat snails. I don't know how long I can safely go without feeding them. Also I thought I might slowly try to reduce the GH/KH of the water so that there are fewer minerals for the snails to develop a shell and make it easier for the loaches to break.

The snails appear to be pond and MTS. They eat my plants so not feeding the fish at all will not hamper them in the least. I can usually use a siphon to suck up snails on my driftwood and tank walls, and put the water back in the aquarium since they sink to the bottom. But I only have time to do that once a day. I would prefer that the loaches do what they are good at. Please help me out.

[Bully]

I'm of the opinion that loaches shouldn't be considered as a clean up crew for snails. To expect them to exist on a diet of simply snail meat does not bode well for the long-term care of the fish. It's not their job to control a snail infestation for you. If you have a population of MTS then I doubt that Y. sidthimunki will make much of an impact anyway, it seems only the more determined and much larger loach species have any chance of eating MTS.

Have you tried baiting your snails overnight? There's a lot of success reported by using cucumber or zucchini overnight and pulling it out each morning just before lights on. Your loaches will also enjoy the cucumber or zucchini and it will be a welcome supplement to their diet. I have heard success of raw potato attracting snails too. Combining this with your daily siphoning should give you a high success rate. Y. sidthimunki will take care of your snail eggs for you, but MTS are livebearers and so they may well need alternative methods of control. There is a snail species called Anentome helena/cleo aka the Assassin Snail. These will eat MTS with much enthusiasm.

[mickthefish]

i don't have snails in any of my tanks, i painstakingly removed them myself, like Bully says loaches are'nt in the tank just for that purpose.
i'm getting thick in my old age, but what are MTS?.

mick

[Ashleigh]

i'm getting thick in my old age, but what are MTS?.

mick

Malaysian trumpet snails


Ashleigh

[mickthefish]

Cheers Ashleigh.
i've always found them to be the easiest to eradicate, every morning most would have left the gravel and were on the glass.
using a fine mesh net i could scoop out loads every day.
once i was down to seeing only a few of them, they were easy to to grub out of the gravel.

mick

[Diana]

Many Loaches can do a credible job eradicating the pond snail, but cannot do much against MTS. Some fish (not just Loaches) learn to suck the meat out of the MTS snails, but I do not think any of mine ever figured it out.

I have found that the smaller Loaches (ie Kuhlies) only really eat the smallest snails, and the parent population of snails will live for a lot longer, producing more and more 'Kuhlie Loach food'.

Larger Loaches can handle the larger snails.

There is no reason to suggest that they cannot do double duty in our tanks: They are interesting fish to keep for many reasons. Snail removal is only one of those reasons.

All fish should be offered a diet that is as varied as their nature permits (and requires). Snails are part of the natural diet for quite a few fish. Most of my tanks have very few snails, and when I find them I add them to one of the tanks with Loaches.
Fasting for a day or so is not a problem for fish, and it does seem to make them look around the tank for more food. Young fish should not be treated this way, they need constant good nutrition to grow well. Once they have some food reserves built up, though, there is no reason you must keep stuffing them twice a day with commercial food. Let them spend a day grazing on algae and hunting snails, and other things in the tank.

The other direction in snail control is to reduce the excess food that feeds the snails. Feed the fish less.
Pond snails will eat aquarium plants that are not thriving for whatever reason, and their cells are weakened. Improve the light/fertilizer/carbon supplies and see how the plants (and snails) respond.

[andyroo]

I wish i had your problems...
I had a great collection of about 6 different spp of assorted snails including monstrous local trumpets and mysteries.
Y. modesta cleaned 'em out in about a week, including mysteries that were bigger then they were.
Recently they've learned how to crack a mature Nerite. I'm annoyed, but very impressed.
A

[Mike Ophir]

I too am of the opinion that Loaches should not be kept for snail removal. You really have to give them a varied diet. If you are desperate to rid your tank of snails, you can just strip the entire tank, clean it out and re-set.

Mike

[Soujirou]

Thanks for the replies. The loaches are not in the tank just for snail control, they are one part of my Asian themed tank. When I first got them, I fed them normally with catfish pellets, carnivore pellets, algae wafers, blood worms and cucumbers and they still ate all of my snails.

I am not sure that the snails are MTS, when I got my first outbreak of snails, they all had spiral shells, but as they grew larger they looked like pond snails. During this second outbreak, the only large snails I have found look like pond snails. 98% of them are probably under 1/8" about 75% of them under 1/16".

Since they are so small, there is no way I can pick them all out by hand as they like to hide in nooks and crannies. Zucchini and cucumber might attract 10 snails overnight if I am lucky. I have much better luck using a siphon where I get around 100 of them.

Even if I were to assume the small ones were all MTS, I am still confused as to why they let the few large pond snails I have found survive. They have eaten them in the past, and if I drop one in front of them, they swim off with it into the back, and five minutes later I will find the empty shell in the front.

[Bully]

Even if I were to assume the small ones were all MTS, I am still confused as to why they let the few large pond snails I have found survive. They have eaten them in the past, and if I drop one in front of them, they swim off with it into the back, and five minutes later I will find the empty shell in the front.

My suggestion would be that this is due to a Pavlovian response. The fish have learned to associate certain triggers with feeding i.e., yourself approaching the tank and then a sinking substance. This prompts them to feed.

If you're uncertain of the id of the snails then post a pic and somebody will be able to help out

As Diana has mentioned, the smaller species of loach will only tackle smaller snails, and they may well be eating eggs and smaller snails, but not enough to make an impact. I doubt that starving the fish for a few days will have any impact on this, especially if you have so many snails that you can syphon a hundred or more a day. As Diana mentioned I think the root cause of a snail explosion needs to be looked at and dealt with.

I you have a serious infestation then I would probably do as Mike Ophir has suggested and strip the tank down if you have the facilities to do so. I would err on the side of caution if you're thinking of chemical methods of control as having a large population of snails die in your tank will severly affect your water quality.

[Soujirou]

I guess I should've said "up to 100 snails". I probably only got 50 of them last night so the population is on the decline.

I believe you are right about the loaches responding to my behavior. They definitely know when it is time to eat, and if I walk by later when they are hungry and the light is on, they become more active and aggressive as if it were feeding time.

I will be receiving a new batch of sids next week, so I think from now on I will be dropping their food in the back so that hopefully they never see me directly feeding them and get into the habit of searching for food on their own. I don't know how long that will fool them, if at all though.

[zmo63]

Maybe your new sids will train the older ones? I recently got a new batch of young sids, and they didn't seem to be eating the snails I would give them while in quarantine. After a few weeks with the bigger guys (who LOVE snails), they were all actively seeking out the snails.

Like everyone says though - probably best to figure out why you're getting so many snails in the first place. The way I understand it, they sort of act like a 'canary in the coal mine' indicating that the tank might be getting out of hand. If the loaches are eating them all, you may miss the signs.

[Soujirou]

I came up with a new strategy for getting my loaches into the habit of eating snails. I figured that if I purchase live food that it might awaken their old instinct to hunt food instead of waiting for it to be dropped in the tank. That being said, of the several live foods available, which ones would you recommend most? I am hoping for something that will give them a good swim.

Also, I was wondering if it is possible for snails to eat decaying driftwood? I noticed that when I pull my wood out, it releases a lot of wood particles into the water. When I first purchased the wood, I let it leech out for 6 days in 3 buckets of fresh water. The vast majority of snail also stick onto the wood and those that are on the glass tend to stay near it. You can see the wood I am talking about in the picture below:



You can sort of see one piece in the middle and one off to the right. I have no idea exactly what it is, it was just in my LFS. Would anyone recommend sealing it?

EDIT: Thought I should mention that the pH of my tank is between 6.6 - 6.8.