Make Your Own Snail Trap

Ok, I think that I have finally found out a way to engineer my own snail trap. First I took a long piece of tubing, no bigger than a 1/2 in. in diameter, then i put in some shrimp pellets and put it into the spot where they feed. And, wala! lol. In the morining I found tons of snails in the tub. Tonight I put in some shrimp pellets and a few small peices of ground chuck. I hope that this one works even better and that i will find even more snails in the tube! Just thought that I would share something with you guys, just in case someone else was having the same problem. Also, make sure that the tube entrance is small enough so the snails can get in but the fish cant. If anyone has any questions I will be glad to answer to the best of my abilities. Thanks. :)
**Edit. The snail that I am trying to capture are pond snails and ramshorn snails. I would keep the ramshorns, but there are just so many. I am trying to keep the larger rams though. I will just have to control their babies. Thanks everyone.

Sounds like a great trap, the only thing you might change would be the ground chuck you have in there. the meat will foul your water rather quickly. :)

Do you have a picture of your trap?

that sounds like an awsome trap  ;D

keep up the ideas

Your idea is a godsend, and perfect timing too! Now I can set up one of those and get my poor fiddler crab out of the tank because she is absolutely uninterested in eating any snails period.

Thanks for sharing Platy!  I just bought some shrimp pellets yesterday, I'm going to try that!

No problem guys. And yes, about the ground chuck, I did take it out. They didnt seem as interested in it as they did the shrimp pellets. Sorry guys, I dont have a picture. I will try to draw one on the computer and post it later on.

I hope that this diagram helps. If you have any more questions or you dont understand the diagram just ask. I am actually thinking of puting more of these all around my aquarium.
 

Wow now that I got a visual I understand much better.  This is an awesome idea I'm going to give it a try.  Do you just use regular airline tubing?

No actually. I had a old hand vacuum for the aquarium which was supposed to take out the dirt but not the water, well it didnt work so I took it apart and made the one piece into the trap. To be exact it is a 1/2 in. in diameter. I will draw another diagram to show the size of the end. Here it is. Actually it is like a 16 of an inch bigger. It shrunk when i loaded it. But you get the size that i am talking about right?
 

Hm....this is just an extension of the cup-with-food-in-it, but still.
How about a long tube (perhaps going out of the aquarium) with one end closed; fill with tank water,put sinking food in the entrance end, wait for it to go to the bottom and then stick the entrance end into the tank?
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Now that I think of it, that's propbably not a great idea - snails might not smell it, and it'll be even harder to get fish out of a tube like that. But just an alternative for those that don't want to chop up their substrate vacs. :P

My LFS sales different size thin walled clear tubing along with the rigid airline tubing although the rigid airline has a thick wall. BTW what you had was probably a battery powered sludge extractor.