Are these snails Astraea, or Trochus?

[Bret Brinkmann]

Yep, I see red bands. It's a red banded trochus. Thanks for posting a picture with whites on. Much easier. The LFS people told you correctly.

 

[DSC reef]

I'm still going with astrea, heres some red banded trochus for refrence. Who knows, both are a great part of the CUC. FWIW, my LFS would get trochus and astrea in the same shipping box so it was difficult to ID. Maybe we had some trochus too. This is one of the good things about R2R, learning new stuff.

 

[Billldg]

I see the faded red strips in the white picture, but this is the picture I went by and look at the layering of the shell.

 

[DSC reef]

I like when they grow coralline on the shells!

 

[Billldg]

I like when they grow coralline on the shells!

I think my red striped trochus snail may disagree, lol!!! I order several trochus snails from what is now Aqualocker a little over a year ago and they had babies. Now I have 40 to 50 red striped trochus snails in my tank and you can't tell what they are because they are all completely covered in coraline algae. When they are above the water line when I do a water change it kills the coraline algae and then I have half white and half purple snails, LOL, talk abut a fashion statement.

 

[DSC reef]

I remember the 125 had turbos we bought pretty small. They grew into baseball size, no joke. I remember a friend wanted to seed his tank with coralline so we threw him a turbo snail due to being literally plated in coralline.

 

[Billldg]

I have plenty of coraline algae encrusted snails to anyone who is local to Atlanta, I need to get rid of some because 40 or so snails is like 4 times what I want in my tank, and now those are trying to breed as well as they will occasionally cloud up my tank depositing eggs and such. Kinda looks like a machine gun when they fire them, LOL!!!

 

[DSC reef]

I have plenty of coraline algae encrusted snails to anyone who is local to Atlanta, I need to get rid of some because 40 or so snails is like 4 times what I want in my tank, and now those are trying to breed as well as they will occasionally cloud up my tank depositing eggs and such. Kinda looks like a machine gun when they fire them, LOL!!!

Sounds like a happy healthy system to me.

 

[DHill6]

@Bret Brinkmann here is a pic with whites.

Astrea

 

[Bret Brinkmann]

Astreas don't have stripes. Their shells are all white, assuming no coralline of course. There are also the extra antennae looking things when they are walking around. Astreas don't have those either.

 

[DHill6]

I have both red banded trochius and astrea. The astrea have a pointed taller shell more so than the trochius. Astrea will be the algae bulldozers, trochius will right themselves.

 

[Idoc]

I have several astraea snails and rary ever run into an issue with them falling onto their backs. The only time mine have done that was due to me knocking them off a rock.