snails affecting breeding??

Hi all,
Just wanted to ask if anyone had any info on whether snails affect BN from breeding? do snails get to the eggs or will the dad eat them to protect the eggs? or whether a female BN won't lay eggs if snails are in the cave. i'm talking about the annoying little black/brown snails that come from pet stores with new plants. i had loaches eating the snails before but now my tank is only peppermint BN and snails are becoming a bit of a problem. i don't want to use copper or chemicals to rid the snails as it may be harmful for the BN. Any ideas on how to get rid of the snails? or if they are fine to just leave them in there?
Cheers

I have those little bastards in most of my breeding tanks. I dont find they have much of an inpact on the breeding but they do get to a point whenre they have an effect on the tank. They increase the bioload in the tank and can cause nasty spikes in things like ammonia, nitrate etc.

When i feel that they are getting too numerous i will grab out all of the solid things in the tank (including the cave if the male is not on eggs) and soak it in hot water for a good 10 mins. This kills off all the adults who are still on the logs etc but more importantly it kills off the eggs. I have once or twice in the past taken the fish out of the tank and hit it with either snail killers or bleach to sterilise the tanks, then re-cycled it but that is drastic and only happens if its really bad and I'm in a foul mood, so its not too often

I too have had snails in my tanks. The first infestation was of common pond snails that came in on some plants. I used to squish them when I saw any on the glass and my mollies then gobbled them up so they were never a problem, I just didn't like them.
The other snail was and is the malaysian trumpet snail. They started with one that accidentally got into the tank when I released a new fish and I left it there because I, the ignorant idiot, thought it was cute with it's little spiral shell...... Those things reproduce like crazy and they are now everywhere. They do have some benefit in sifting though the sand substrate, and as the population of MTS increased the pond snails disappeared in all but one tank which was good as I didn't see any benefit to having pond snails. Neither snail seemed to disturb the BN in any way. To control the numbers of MTS I bought a sink strainer. When the snail population starts getting excessive I run that strainer through the sand during my routine tank cleaning. Shake it a bit and the sand falls through the holes in the sink strainer and the snails don't so they can be easily removed.

Thats a great idea the strainer snail collection tool ,