Clean up Crew Question

[bambo]

How many trochus snails is to many? i have a 100 gallon system and bought 15 trochus snails and added them. they have all had babies. i have babies every where and when i say everywhere i mean everywhere. every piece of rock i look at has babies. babies on the glass they are everywhere. so my question is how many is to many and are they going to hurt anything? im curious if my high nitrate issue could be cause be some of this? Thoughts?

 

[Biokabe]

CUC tends to be self-regulating, especially if they're actively breeding in your aquarium.

That said - after the initial influx, they don't really impact nitrate levels. You could be seeing some nitrate elevation as snails die and rot in the tank, but net you shouldn't see a measurable change once everything solidifies.

Why? Well, consider the following (simplified) progression:

1. You add fish food to your tank. This, eventually, decays into nitrate (among other chemicals)
2. Algae absorbs the nitrate and uses it to fuel growth.
3. Snails eat the algae (and thus, the absorbed nitrate) and use it to make their bodies bigger (and eventually to make babies).
4. The snails die, and some portion of the nitrates they used to increase the biomass of snails returns to the water. Most of what they had picked up, however, is taken up by whatever eats their remains, and is instead used to increase the biomass of whatever ate them.
5. The cycle repeats.

So long as you don't have a concentrated burst of snail death, any increase from dead snails will ultimately turn back into algae and then be converted into snail biomass again. So unless you have a mass death event, snail population shouldn't be a major impact on waterborne nitrates.