Fighting with Unwanted Snails in Your Aquarium

Since 1988, I have been having aquariums in my house. My hobby started with a 50 liters (13 gallon) aquarium and now I have one 600 liters (158 gallon) and two 150 liters (40 gallon) aquariums. I breed live bearers in my aquariums. I have very good external filters. And I try to clean the aquariums almost every week, also changing ¼ of the water.

I never had snails in my aquarium till May 2008. I woke up one morning to feed my fishes, and that was the first time that I see snails in my aquarium. I didn't know where they came but they were there and they were spreading in the tank rapidly. I started to look around to see what I can do to get rid of them. Most websites were saying that the only solution was water treatments and cleaning up. But than they were also saying that those water treatments are harmful to the Corydoras fishes and shrimps, which I all have in my tank. The aquarium shops that I visited also said the same. I ordered a water treatment from a website and started to wait. The same day, I decided to go to an aquarium shop that I didn't visit. The guy was old and he was very much informed about everything. When I told him about my problem with snails, he replied me ''why you ordered those water treatments?''. He showed me Botia fishes and he said these fishes were the only solution to my problem. I got 4 of them and head back to home. The first days, they seem to get to know the aquarium. They were passing by snails and weren't even touching them. At that time I thought maybe I was tricked by that old guy. But in 3 days, I saw what those fishes were all about. They started to suck the living part of the snail and eat it. In about 3 weeks, I got rid of all snails.

So if you have a problem with snails, give Botia fishes a try. But don't forget to have them in groups, minimum number of 4 since they like to live in groups. Protective places like seashells and rocks will make the Botia fishes feel protected. And don't worry if you see them attacking other fishes, they are actually not attacking, they are just getting to know them.