About a year ago I set up a lily pot outside my house complete with plants and 7 guppies. Many beautiful flowers appeared to greet me each day as I went to work, the guppies did what guppies are renowned for and ate and bred.

A couple of frogs appeared and population control was affected then I caught them and removed them.

Recently however a more unwelcome visitor has appeared on this bucolic scene. Snails..... Bloody water snails. They eat away at the leaves and lay more eggs in sticky blobs under the leaves. I was catching and destroying some 15 a day at one stage of various sizes.

Anyway today I headed off to a little nursery in Kamala and bought some new plants...after looking for snails on the new ones.

These are now installed in the newly cleaned and scrubbed pot and the guppies are back doing what guppies do best.

Any ideas on how to treat against snails or deal with them should they return? They are round black objects though I have had some small conical shapes as well. I need something that will not harm the fish or plants please.

Cheers

Take the fishes out to a tank

Treat the plants with a snail killer

Put the fishes back in.

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All I can say is good luck.

^{There are a couple of things you can do that do not involve toxic chemicals . The first is remove all the snails by hand and i would understand if this is not an option. Second one is to leave deep containers of beer about and let them drown drunk . Third is employ some ducks to do the dirty work . With common snails you can also bait them with orange juice, or almost any other substance that is on the snails menu , placed in a large plastic bottle at night and then harvest them in the morning. It may work with the water snails . Let us know how it goes.}

Don't kill them. Collect the eggs and sell them as snail caviar.

Thanks Zen....just what I would do with slugs....however these are actually water snails....they live in the water and only come out onto the leaves to eat....appreciate your reply though.

my that is a big snail! ...

...we have three Chinese egg pot type ponds with water lilies and little gold fish.

When first set 'em up with many beautiful coloured little fish ( grenadiers?) water quickly turned green and cloudy and fishes died or disappeared.....kept emptying and cleaning every month to no avail.

Then thought about introducing different algae eating fishes & snails...so bought some edible fresh water snails at the market and SIL gave me a hundred or so little gold fishes she had borrowed from her neighbor..

...after about a month or so the water was crystal clear..the snails are down to very few as they seem only to eat algae. The gold fish are certainly carnivorous and appear to snack on the algae too..... we feed 'em squished land snails that we take from our orchids and ticks from the dogs in season ..lol.

They also seem to eat dragon fly eggs, and frog spawn......we do not feed 'em anything in the way of fish food , maybe throw in a doggy kibble or two sometimes..lol

....sorry bit long winded but what I am trying to get across is that if you had some more carnivorous fish, would they not eat the eggs of your super snails? Or maybe your current fishes would if you stopped feeding them (assuming you do)?

our only problem is a local kingfisher treating the ponds like a gourmet resturant , also our dogs use 'em as water bowls ....

It's been a week now and the fish seem happy and no sign of snails....hopefully this lot of plants is clean. ...thanks to all who took the time to think on this issue.

It's been a week now and the fish seem happy and no sign of snails....hopefully this lot of plants is clean. ...thanks to all who took the time to think on this issue.

If they come back a good safe way to control their numbers is to float a few pieces of cucumber or lettuce on the water surface. In the morning you will find many snails on the vegetables and you can then throw the veg, and snails away. Do this for a few day and you should get rid of most of the snails. Just repeat this every time you notice the snail population going up! Having a few in the pond is actually a good thing as they clean up food missed by the fish and also eat dead and decomposing leaves so help keep the pond clean - oh and they will help control and algae.

Thanks for the lettuce or cucumber tip....good advice!!