Although this is a VERY harsh method and not health for really anything.....Copper Sulfate will kill snails...among other things

Turtles (red eared sliders) eat snails. So do weather loaches. Copper sulphate is not something you want to use since it will most likely kill more than your snails.

The weather loach should be hardy in your area.

A turtle would eat lots of snails but might eat fish and plants also. A few tropical loches will eat small snails [1 loach cleared my 130 gal indoor of hundreds of snails in a few months]. Without chemicals this is a very tough job.

Snails love lettuce, throw some into your pond and when it gets covered with snails dip it out with a net. May not get them all. but can reduce the population. Glenda

Has anyone used loaches in a large outdoor pond? If so how many would I need for a 16,000 gallon pond? Will they eat my fish? What about Wisconsin winters as I don't bring my fish indoors? Thanks

I have trap-door snails to keep my pond clean. The first year they were on everything, but I had an unbelievable bloom of blanket algae. Since then I started using barley straw to control the algae growth and the number of snails has dropped. The trap-door snails are very beneficial and I would never get rid of them. The number dropped as the pond cleaned up. A lot of snails means that you have a lot of dead matter in your pond.

Has anyone tried shellcrackers/redears to control snails in ponds? I am being overrun with them. I just have 3 comets in my pond along with a bizillion mosquito minnows. After reading another thread, I decided to put in a couple bluegills to control them.

kalevi - did you see in your link where the weather loach is from? Hardly hardy in Zone 4 I would think considering it lists some of the most tropical places on earth.

A bit farther down in the article it says they are truely cold water fish and very adaptable, even being over wintered in ponds in Canada. Interesting link.

I had a bad outbreak of algae, and resorted to using Algaefix a few times. The info on the bottle said it was safe for fish and plants, but not snails. I noticed after I used it, my snail population had much decreased and found a few empty shells in my skimmer net.

Karla33-
are these the small snails that come with aquarium plants or native ones or trapdoor snails?
RexAnne

I find snails in filters, in the waterfall, and in other places that the fish cannot get to. I have koi and some goldfish in various parts of the system. I have always concluded that the goldfish and koi both eat snails, though I confess I have never seen either actually eat a snail. Am I wrong about this? Do goldfish and koi eat snails? If not, does anyone have an explanation why I only see them in the inaccessible places in my ponds?

I've only been ponding since spring but I can assure you goldfish eat snails. I tediously moved hundreds of snails from a small tub with only 4 minnows (and at least 5 snail egg masses) to a a stock tank with only 2 rapidly growing common goldfish and I couldn't find a snail within 2 days. When the goldfish were in the 19 gal tub, they ate every snail I put in there. Kinda felt sorry for the snails.

I've never seen them do it, but I think my goldfish suck the larger snails right out of their shells. I often find empty snail shells. The smaller snails just don't seem to exist. I call it my fish escargot.
Deb