How to Rid Your Freshwater Tank of Snails

Remove snails from your aquarium with a simple trap.

Snails in an aquarium can help keep it clean. They will eat small bits of living and decaying organic matter. While a small population of snails is helpful in a freshwater tank, when the population gets out of control it is necessary to remove some of the snails. Large snails are easy; you can remove them by hand. Smaller snails can be more difficult to remove by hand because of both their size and their number. Using a simple trap, you can reduce the population of snails in your aquarium in only a few days and with little work.

Things You'll Need

• Small jar
• Lettuce

Instructions

1. Remove the lid of the small jar.

2. Put a piece of lettuce in the jar.

3. Carefully put the jar upright at the bottom of the aquarium, making sure the lettuce does not float free.

4. Wait a day. After about a day, the jar will have a number of small snails in it eating the lettuce.

5. Remove the jar with the snails in it from the aquarium.

6. Dispose of the snails. Since these are aquatic snails, you cannot put them in dry land. Put them into a nearby stream or pond.

7. Repeat until there are only a few snails left in the tank.

8. Repeat whenever the population of snails is out of control.

References

• myfishtank.net; Freshwater Snail Removal; 2011
• AquariumFish.net; How to Get Rid of Small Snails; 2011