Rant, rave or Comment - I hate MTS how can I get rid of them

Good to hear that it worked so well!!

I haven't tried it on Ram snails- I'm keeping some of those on purpose. Need to have live food on hand in case I'm ever lucky enough to find some crazy pufferfish that I've been on the lookout for - Carinotetraodon salivator.

-- And to second Mr. Morris, I have only had a single assassin snail, but it managed to wipe out the entire snail population in a 10 gallon planted tank in short order. This tank was rife with snails when I put it in there and it made quick work of them. I will admit, however, that when the assassin died the snail population rebounded. So it clearly did not completely eradicate the other snails, but it kept them in check for the entirety of its lifespan.

-- I won't argue the logic of that, Jason. I have no doubt that the snails could pose a threat to the eggs if unchecked. I will mention that in my experience with 'Lamprologus' similis, Lepidiolamprologus sp. 'meeli kipili', 'L.' multifasciatus, Altolamprologus calvus, and various Neolamprologus species the female clears the snails out of the area and even the male will occassionally help out. I know the similis in particular are ceaseless in removing snails from the area of any eggs or young fry.
-- The calvus are the least diligent of the species I mentioned in this regard, but even they do it a little bit.

-- I have to say, this is one of the most interesting - and apparently one of the most arresting - topics I've seen on here in a long while. Maybe I have never had the degree of infestation that plagues many of you, but I have always enjoyed having trumpet snails, as well as ramshorn and pond snails, in my aquariums. Oddly enough, I find that, outside of botias, cichlids make some of the best snail exterminators out there.
-- Unlike many people, I have substrate in all of my tanks. Perhaps that helps detract from the unsightly appearance of the snails. A pile of snails in the corner of an otherwise empty tank does make for a disagreeable sight.

Assasin Snails will wipe them out. I've used them in several tanks.

The plants were already in bad shape before the Flubendazole treatment, but it didn't seem to accelerate their decline any. I had over a dozen types of plants in there for close to two years without any substrate, even though most of them should have been planted immediately. I just refused to put substrate in there until I found a way to eradicate the snails- I didn't want to make the job any harder. I was manually removing as many as I could find, baiting them, etc. Using plenty of effort and a small-diameter siphon with a rigid, aimable section on it, I could catch maybe 99% of them - but that's simply not enough. I think the snails were also damaging the plants, plus I eventually figured out that the T5 light on that tank was gradually going bad and it probably had terrible spectrum for quite awhile before I tried the Flubendazole..

scubadiver wrote: Don with Flubendazole how much does it cost to treat a 40gallon breeder? How many treatments do you need? Did the tank skunk after you killed them all?

It doesn't cost much at all, especially since I bought 100 grams and still have most of it left. I'll bring you some at the next meeting. It comes in powder form, so you'll need a decent digital scale to get the dosage right. You can borrow my scale and do it yourself, or I could bring pre-measured doses instead- just let me know the sizes of whatever tanks you want to try it on.

The powder doesn't dissolve as easily as you might expect, so the best technique is to put it in a water bottle that's less than half-full of warm water and shake it until everything dissolves..

It didn't skunk my tank, but I also got rid of most of the adults beforehand. There was no substrate in the tank, so I siphoned out all the big ones I could find as I did a 95% water change right before the Flubendazole treatment. That mostly just left hundreds of tiny ones hiding in the floating bunches of plants. I left the Flubendazole in there for quite awhile before doing another water change- probably at least 3 weeks. One dose worked great- this was well over a year ago, and I still have no snails. The only fish in the tank were Swordtails, and they didn't seem to mind the treatment at all- it seems not to be as rough on the fish as things like Levamisole.