# A little warning to those snail squishers!



## neven (May 15, 2010)

Recently i've made it my mission to rid my tanks of pond snails. My smaller tanks i squish the snails, but something happened in my shrimp tank. I squished too many and now i have a hydra outbreak. Normally shrimp tanks are fine with a few hydra, but one area of my tank is very dense with star grass and they're filled with hydra, so shrimp who venture into that area of the tank i later find dead. So just a warning to those who squish, simply dont do it and resort to baiting.


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## rescuepenguin (Apr 21, 2010)

Turkey basters work for me. I have used then to get rid of hydra too


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## neven (May 15, 2010)

just too many of them atm to work with manual removal, they'll die off quick enough due to the sparse feedings, plus i'll trim all stems to half length to remove the ones on the lower leaves.


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## Keri (Aug 2, 2010)

Interesting. How are they related to the snails if you don't mind me asking? (I don't know anything about these, are they similar to saltwater hydroids? They look like them.)


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## plantedinvertz (Apr 21, 2010)

When I squish the snails my shrimp eat them [:


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## iluvfsh (Nov 5, 2010)

How do you use a turkey baster to get the snails? I've tried to use cucumber before or lettuce, but doesn't seem to work


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## Pamelajo (Feb 9, 2011)

iluvfsh said:


> How do you use a turkey baster to get the snails? I've tried to use cucumber before or lettuce, but doesn't seem to work


I attach cucumber, broccoli stems or sweet potato to a fork with fishing line attached and then pull the vegetable when covered. Then feed to my tank of assassins.

Spixi snails are great for removing hydra.


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## neven (May 15, 2010)

i just added the shrimp to the tank, so there are not many, and when you squish them its now like adding a ton of fish food in a small tank with no fish


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## rescuepenguin (Apr 21, 2010)

iluvfsh said:


> How do you use a turkey baster to get the snails? I've tried to use cucumber before or lettuce, but doesn't seem to work


Squeeze the air out of the bulb (before putting in tank), the nudge the snail a bit with the tip and they get sucked up. If you don't have any snail eaters squeeze the bulb again into a container of salt water. The salt will kill them

Steve


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## iluvfsh (Nov 5, 2010)

Thanks rescuepenguin - I'll have to try that.


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## EDGE (Aug 24, 2010)

If you squished too many snails at once, you might trigger something worse than hydra.. a huge ammonia spike.


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## neven (May 15, 2010)

i snipped half the plant stems (or more) some trashed the others put aside for someone wanting hydra cultures. Then i made a siphon with an airline tube rubber banded to my tongs. With this i went around the glass and scraped away much of the hydra there and sucked it into a bag filled with the hydra infested stems. Then water change, and now a Fenbendazole treatment. Tomorrow is regular water change schedule, so i'll do another tomorrow to keep the routine up.

Im not sure if the ammonia spike is still present, i did have planaria appear, but they were gone by the next morning, before the water changes. So i think i've done what i can for now, we'll see. Most of the shrimp are alive still and active.


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## big_bubba_B (Apr 25, 2010)

would assasin snails take care of those snails or are they to big ?


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