"Daniel Morrow" wrote in message
...
Bottom posted.


"Jeff" wrote in message
...
Thanks to a lot of people on this group my tank is doing great. Havent
lost
a fish since I started following EVERY recomendation from the group.
Water
is crystal clear and all levels are darn near perfect. One thing I
didnt
listen to was about the snails. I let the one I saw hang around and
now I
have at least dozens of them. In order to get them all it looks like I
would
have to start all over and after 5 weeks of getting it right I dont
want
to
do that. I was going to put in 2 Clown Loaches but was told by Pet
Smart I
couldnt do that because they are semi aggressive and would kill all
the
fish
in my Community Tank. The snails are on the glass, in the rocks, on
the
plants (Live and artificial), they are everywhere. The fish look to be
real
happy and content and healthy (If fish can be happy) and I really dont
want
to go through 5 more weeks of cycling and setup and in all probability
kill
all the fish. Any suggestions?



You can either tolerate/live with the snails or get some clown loaches,
which if you arrange it right with the right pet store/lfs, can be a
temporary thing. You should almost always be able to return fish you
bought
previously. Listen to what others have said here too (especially netmax
the
macgyver-like knowledge big grin to you netmax), you should be able
to
return the clown loaches after they have finished their job, I am not
totally sure if the clown loaches will eat every single snail/snail's
eggs
but I hope they would so the clown's could be especially helpful,
especially
with snails. Other than that you might try the veggy on a small plate
in the
tank overnight but I doubt it would be totally successful at removing
snails
as there are always eggs somewhere at this point. I used to take in
many
bags into my lfs for donation, of fancy guppies which are descendants
of
some chain store's fancy guppies, and they took them all, admittedly
though
I had to change from a chain store to a lfs because the chain store
soon
changed their policy to only taking pets that have been officially
shipped
to the chain store from an authorized shipment, so that chain store no
longer will take any fish in from hobbyists. Good luck and later!

P.s. I never needed to even wait to bring the fish in I just called the
lfs
an hour or two before bringing them in and they took them.


I recommended Clown loaches to a customer with a snail problem, but he
was sceptical of pet shop advice (very wise), so he only bought one Clown
loach to see if it ate any snails at all. He was back the next day with
a very fat dead Clown in a ziplock bag. Apparently the fish had eaten
itself to death, but in the process it had eaten every snail in his tank.
While we were both saddened by the fish dying, the customer was quite
pleased his snail problem was completely and so quickly solved, and I
imagine the loach had a smile on its face at some point in that meal.

Typically, loaches take 2 or 3 weeks to completely eradicate a tank of
snails, and sometimes they even have to be shown that there is something
yummy inside the shell, and some snails just cannot be completely
destroyed (Malaysian trumpets sometimes), so ymmv.
--
www.NetMax.tk ... like MacGyver, jack of all trades, master of none ;~)