aquatic snails

Question
I have a couple of questions.  I had a snail free fresh water tank and bought a couple of live plants on ebay... and now I have a large population (200 plus) of snails.  I have no idea what kind... they are small pea size and brown.... my first question is will the snail population control itself or will they continue to breed until there are so many that the tank can not support them???  This particular tank I use for baby guppies so will the snails hurt the fry????  My last question is ... should I try to control these snails or just let them be???

Answer
Hi David;

Keeping snails in a baby tank (or any tank) isn't such a bad thing unless they start to overpopulate, so a few are okay. They don't hurt the babies, they just make a lot of waste. Baby fish need so much food that it causes the snails to breed like crazy from all the organic matter in the tank. To control their population you could collect some and squish them for your fish and other snails to eat. It is part of their natural diet and they will love it once they get the idea that it's supposed to be food. If that is beyond what you are willing to do, remove them and freeze them and then toss them away in the trash or flush them down the commode, but only after they are dead. If you can't seem to get very many out manually, put a small leaf of lettuce in at night and take it out with the snails that collect on it in the morning. Freeze or squish them and dispose.

Avoid the snail killing products on the market. They can be very harmful to the system and will leave so many dead snail bodies that it will pollute the water as they decay.  

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins