The Battle with Algae and Snails

As I've mentioned before, I am waging a bit of a war on the snails in my 20Long planted tank. I also have been struggling a bit with algae since adding the 65w light. After trolling the internet waters for a while I decided to just follow the advice of many fellow aquarists who smoosh up the snails and feed them to their fish. I started doing this and stopped feeding my fish regular fish food on a regular basis. Now I feed them once every few days and give them snails once every other day. The rest of the time they live off of the land, so to speak.

It is working. My snail population is not growing anymore, possibly shrinking by a little. My algae problem is also fading away. Now the issue will be finding the balance with all of this. Once the algae starts to fade more I will have to increase fish food slowly to make sure that everybody is thriving. I would recommend a similar solution to anyone. It's not a quick fix but it is an ongoing one. Just watch your fish and your water conditions to make sure all is well.

At some point I may have to try a self-sustaining tank. I'll stock it with snail eaters, scavengers and algae eaters and keep the light and CO2 flowing. Once I hit critical mass I could potentially have a tank that feeds itself. I'll just have to clean it and keep an eye on everybody, making sure that they are growing and thriving. I think the occasional supplement won't really be cheating. Just being careful.