Philosophos

What are you doing with the 29? Compressed CO2? Plants? If the plants are either tough or plentiful, you can always temporarily drop in some kind of botia spp. Yoyo loach much on small snails just fine. If you've got a bunch of high end, delicate plants, my favorite way has been to attack their shells. Just change the water out with 100% RO, replace the minerals via ferts to maintain osmotic pressure via GH (50ppm will do the job, standard EI stuff) with very low KH, bubbling in the CO2 until it gets down to around 6.0-6.5. I maintain my parameters at this level 100% of the time anyhow, but a month or two of it will wipe out snails and their eggs IME.

*edit* oops, didn't see which area of the forum I was on. Go with the yoyo loach, even dwarf chain might work. Puffers are very good if you've got absolutely no stock currently in there; I'm sure a LFS would oblige.

-Philosophos

WhiteDevil

A dwarf will be fine as long as it has a source of food, once the snails run out get it out of there quick.

pkeeler

If there are no fish in there, why not lower the pH to around 5.8. That will, supposedly, dissolve the snails. If it doesn't, we will at least put to rest the idea that you need pH > 7 to keep snails

wkndracer

Lowered KH to 2 degrees on two injected tanks (with fish) and every ramshorn was gone in less than 30 days. There were bunch's of snails because they had something to eat, with the snails gone I've had a nice algae bloom.

Diana K

Cories do not do great work on snails. Loaches are better, and generally decent in a community tank.
For a 29, though, only the smaller Loaches would work (sids, Kuhlies) and they are not as fast at controlling the snails. I think these smaller Loaches just eat the smallest snails, so you are getting rid of the babies, but the breeders are still there.
Skunk Loaches can be very aggressive. Puffers can be very aggressive. Same comments about both: OK with no other fish in the tank, but neither species are good community fish.
Keeping the 29 going as a snail breeding tank for the Clown Loaches is OK, too. Just use whichever bait you found worked the best perhaps once or twice a week.

dianainOH

I think I'll stick trying to control the population rather than tinkering w/the water chemistry. I don't really mind the snails, I just need to cut their numbers a bit and reduce plant damage. I do like kulis and I 've never owned sids, so they might be an option. I could bait out larger snails for the clowns in the 55 and keep smaller loaches in the 29 to control offspring. Do you think kulis or sids will harass my mystery snails??

JKUK

I always use assassin snails, (Anentome helena) in planted tanks as I find loaches can be too destructive. Not to mention near impossible to catch without destroying your plants. These little guys will eat just about any other aquatic snails, even ones much larger than themselves. A simple natural cure.

Diana K

That is the problem. Anything you add that attacks snails will attack the pet snails as well as the pest snails.
Best solution may be a 2-part approach.
Do not overfeed the tank (excess fish food feeds snails) and harvest the snails for Loach food.