Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Ok I brought a few aquarium plants a few months ago to keep the nitrate down in the aquarium. that’s when I had the goldfish inside, who ate most of the plants? I took what was left off the plants out and placed them into my backup aquarium 30ltr with the pump running. Only one plant remains. But it had little followers with it. At first there was a little spec, then there was two and now about twenty. Two are the size of a five cent piece. Now here is my question!

A. do I add some bleach and kill them all.

B .should I add them to the sump tank to clean the algae and feed the yabbies?

C .do I add them to the fish tank and let the Barra eat them. Do Barra eat snails? Will they clean my fist tank?

D . do I drain the water and feed them to the ants? I don’t think putting them down the drain is legal?

Well the glass is clean, so they are doing a good job with the tank. I did a search on snails but most are talking about plant eating snails. These are algae eating snails. But I don’t want them to takeover my system. Advice please?

Hi Blizzard,

A friend who had a aquaculture system decided to grow some duck weed for his fish. The starter plants came from a farm dam. In the next several months they grew more snails than I had ever seen before.

The 3000 liter up flow swirl filter was full of them, 20,000 liters of fish tanks were full of them, the bio filter and pipes were filling up fast.

The owner was in panic mode they could not keep up removing them by hand. Solution was the fish. Once they were big enough to start eating them they were all gone within a month. Fish were Trout, Murray Cod, Murray Catfish and Silver Perch.

I don't know about Barra but the snail type in this system were eating the algae and the fish were eating them.
System collapsed and no more snails. Friend never mentioned them returning.

God bless, froggo.

So that’s a feed them to the fish vote? C. I have three silvers with my Barra.

If they're not in the AP system yet I'd try to keep them out.
The barra wouldn't be likely to eat them from the walls of the tank but the silvers might?
I'd be worried about the risk of infestation (has to be seen to be believed).

Keep them out of the AP, they'll get in your pipes and pumps and places where fish can't get them and could block pipes up eventually.

Yup, I agree, keep them out of your AP system.

If you can remove the plants/any fish you might have then I'd bleach bomb your tank to kill them off, should be quicker than luring them to lettuce in a jar and so on.

I'll let you know how the "wait and see" technique goes in a few months, as I have em in my system... Free weed came with passengers!

Can also look up "assassin snails". See if they're available to you in your area. I think they'll be my solution this spring when my snail population explosion is due.

+1. Assassin snails. They need brackish water to breed so they won't run rampant. Also most loaches love snails

Sorry edit to last post they can breed but they do so much slower than the invasive snails. Very few eggs at a time. I had them confused with another variety

I took the plant out today. The tank in question is my daughters old start-up tank around 20/30 litres. Yes I can see how they need to die. But! I don’t wont to use bleach to kill them as I want to reuse the tank in the future. I cant poor them down the drain as that would be environmentally unsafe. I am a bit of a greenie after all. Now that the plant has been removed and the pump turned off I can see about 40 snails? But the tanks clean. From algae. I may leave their fait for a few days as I decide on how. I wont be using this tank until the trout arrive in march. I could always put a yabby in there?

My Yabbies love slugs and snails!

You could get a duck?
They love snails

Bleach shouldn't be a problem for the tank. Once it's been bleach-bombed give it a clean out with some vinegar to neutralise the bleach (that's a really poor sentence and explanation but oh well) and leave it in the sun for a few days.

Out of curiosity, how many trout are you going to try and fit in a 20/30L tank? Wouldn't they go in your 200L tank?

Depends on the snails.

I'be got them all through my system. So far they have only been annoying, clogging jet nozzles, venturi once, that sort of thing. Now that I have a DWC bed I anticipate they could be more than annoying. So in the DWC tank I've already put a couple of galxids and I will get some more plus a couple of black fish or cat fish.