If you have snails in your tank, they may be good or bad to the live plants in the tank.
Some of the expert fish-keepers deliberately keep certain species of snails for the purpose of maintaining the tank.
However, you should not go for them unless and until you have good knowledge about them, otherwise they may overcrowd the tank and spoil the entire environment.
Here are some common breeds of snail which behave friendly in a fish tank Melaniodes tuberculata - This type of snails are introduced deliberately by the fish-keepers.
They eat algae from the tank.
They can also eat the particles of food which are left over and accumulated at the bottom of the tank.
They also eat dead plants which are polluting the water.
They are useful in other ways also.
They will always dig the substrate of the tank.
This is good for keeping the gravel aerated.
They are very sensitive to the toxins which are present in the water.
If the water is polluted due to toxins, they will start crawling to the surface.
For all these reasons they are favored by fish-keepers.
You can safely introduce a few of them in your tank.
Planorbis corneus - These are also supposed to be friends of fish-keepers but you should be more careful about them.
They will eat algae and dead plants, but they are likely to eat some live plants also! They will place themselves on the glass surface or on the decoration items.
If you are using the tank for fish breeding purposes, you should remove all these snails from the tank because they are likely to eat the fish eggs.
Neritina natalensis - They are again eaters of algae.
They are not harmful and you can keep them for maintaining your tank clean.
All the above types of snails will protect your plants and they will try to keep the water clean.
However, some of the fish will eat these snails.
Cichlids or Loaches always like these snails as their treat.
So you need to check their population in the tank.
Their numbers can fall too short if they do not have a hiding place or an escaping place to protect.
But their numbers can go beyond reasonable limits if they get an opportunity.
They can over-crowd your tank very quickly by multiplying themselves and you will have to immediately control them.
One snail can create an army of snails within days! How to remove excessive snails from your tank? Well, the best way is to do it manually.
Some people use baits.
So you can put some food (lettuce or cucumber) in a clean bottle and keep it near the tank.
You can do this in the night and on the next day morning you may be able to catch a lot of them.
Another way of controlling the population of snails is to observe carefully your aquarium every day.
You may notice them traveling on the leaves of plants or on the gravel.
Once you see them, you can manually remove some of them.
Some people use another technique.
There introduce fish like cichlid into the tank.
This fish likes snails as well as the eggs of snails.
Loaches will also eat them.
These Loaches can even find out snails hiding beneath your substrate.
They can suck the snails from their shells! Some people think of introducing chemicals in the tank for controlling the population.
However this is highly dangerous.
It can control the population of snails for some period of time but that may be temporary.
The snails can grow again.
These chemicals may also damage the live plants as well as fish population.
If your tank is over-crowd with snails, you can first try manual method of removing them.
If you are not successful, you can just do an easy trick -clean the tank totally, then rinse the substrate and treat your plants.
Always try to avoid the water in which you brought your fish from the pet shop.
That will prevent unwanted snails from entering your tank.