snails, good or bad ?

[cc]

Few snails came with one of the lily and now I got tons of them. At first I thought they will just eat algae but I actually heard them chewing lily pads like catapillars couple of days ago, have since been trying to get rid of them. Should I?

[Loritx]

The little snails in my pond dont seem to be eating the plants. I do get a few on the skimmer mats.
They do love the waterfall and stream areas! Which is ok, as long as there are not too many - I figure they keep the algae off the rocks. You can see where they have been eating-the rocks will have a clean spot.

I didnt know you could hear them eat?? Must be some BIG Snails you have!!!

[kc8pny]

I have some BIG apple snails in my pond they work good for keeping the algae under control, However I have never had them feasting on my plants.
Try throwing a couple pieces of lettuce in there to try to deter them from your plants.
Hope that helps

[Vickie]

I have snails in all ponds and in my lotus tubs out of ponds. I also put mosquito fish in all tubs. I don't have a problem with them eating plants. Are you sure you don't have China Marker Moths? They lay eggs on your water lily leaves and they hatch out caterpillars which eat holes in your leaves.

[tranquility]

I have no problem with snails eating the plants-I swear if you have water---they will come---I have PPed the crap out of plants before--put them in the pools and in no time the snails show up--Ive even seen them climbing the walls of the pools so I know they can travel from pool to pool or from the ground into the pools....Goats are another story  ....most of the time in a pond the fish will keep them in check---especially if you have koi....
Lawanna

[Esther]

I have gobs of them too. But they are tiny, like the size of a pencil lead maybe. There are mushy blobs of eggs in the Skippy when it's that time of the year. But I've never seen any holes in the lily pads and have never heard of being able to hear them chewing.  ???  I had two apple snails in my inside aquarium that I put in the pond one spring. They both got huge. But when fall came I couldn't find them and eventually they came up floating---dead. They didn't hurt anything either. I mean before they died.

[cc]

Yes, I actually can hear them feasting on the pads, and also saw them in action too  . The biggest one I found is about 3/4" and they are black, I dumped out about a hundred of them the past few days.

[miguynmkoi]

Last summer I had a problem with snails!  The curled rams horn kind.  Hundreds of them!  They ate through all my lily pads I had in a barrel container    Didn't happen anywhere else.

In the pond they somehow got into the filter box and multiplied and clogged the in flow tube    until there was only a trickle in my little waterfall.

[Jonna]

I had snails come in on some water plants in the pond in SoCal and by the end of the summer they had completely clogged the pump impeller.  We had to take the whole thing apart and there was a nasty mess of ground snail in there.   It was the really small ones that got sucked into the pump, a sequence 750 external.  Whenever I'm there I go out at night and pick as many as I can find.  Finally, I don't find many in the pond but they are all throughout the skippy.  Hmmm, maybe the fish got big enough to eat them and it wasn't all my nighttime flashlight snail picking.   I think they are a pest, perhaps especially in areas that don't freeze.