GHA & Army of (Turbo Snails) ... Like Lots of 'Em

potatocouch

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Are turbo snails the answer to Green Hair Algae plague?

Regardless of what tank, there will be doomed a day where GHA will happen in any tank.

Even tank with zero Po4 and zero No3 can still have GHA as they call it not a "true zero" as the Po4 is being consumed by the algae or sometimes I've also heard that the (live) rocks leech Po4.

Some folks went with the avenue of eliminating the root cause of nutrients / Po4 excessiveness by doing wetter skimming, Po4/No3 remover way but what if it's Zero and Zero? What do export out from zero?

I have heard few people have had success with deploying army of snails (mostly Mexican Turbo snails) in their tank to eliminate GHA problem. They've admitted that GHA cannot be stopped from happening but the solution is to have those snails to consume those GHA as their grow. Admittedly Turbos don't eat the long GHA therefore manual human intervention/trimming still required for the longer GHA and let the fresh growth to be controlled by the turbos.

Some have had success when they deploy 50 Turbo Snails in a 50 gallon tank (1 gallon = 1 snail guideline).

What's your take into this?

1659066745186.png
 

paintman

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Biggest waste of money in the hobby! We should all be ashmed of ourselves!
 

Bucs20fan

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Turbos do consume a ridiculous amount of algae, especially GHA but what they dont touch is GHA that is grown out. They like to eat the new stuff or the stuff thats been mowed down like grass so to speak. I use snails for maintenance, not to eliminate it, they cant possible eat it that fast.


Edit: Also, turbos are large and cant get into lots of small spaces, I mix in astreas and ceriths, with a combo of some blue leg hermits. That is my algae maintenance crew.
 

paintman

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first off turbos fall over and can't right themselves only to be left to die.

secondly alot of times gha is miss diagnosed as lynbya or dinos which is toxic to snails.

3rdly far to often this hobby likes to blatantly throw a CUC at every problem instead of getting off our lazy butts and do the leg work ourselves to solve the problem we caused.

we shoud all be ashamed (myself included) at the thousands upon thousand of inverabrates we have killed because of either our laziness, quick fix mentality, or just plain lack of knowledge of what actually happening in our tanks.

give me 30 minutes a week, a turkey baster, power fiter, floculant, or a siphon hose and I will acomplish 10x more than any CUC.

Instead we woud all much rather just drop, dump, or poor some kind of quick fix into the tank. Then sit back and admire all the blinky blinky gadgets, and phone data from our fancy controllers.
 

polyppal

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Turbos work, but as others stated you’ll want to do a lot of manual removal first, particularly the longer strands which they will likely miss. And you don’t need a ton of them, they are likely to starve and die in the near future if you go overboard. Ethics aside, the large biomass of decaying dead snails would likely bring a host of other problems
 

Lost in the Sauce

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50 turbo's in a 50g sounds expensive, excessive, and not all that useful. They would be competing for food and slowly dying.

Turbo's aren't the magic fix. They can be a useful part of a well rounded cuc.
 

Tuan’s Reef

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I have 1 mexican turbo snail in my tank (red sea 200xl) and I am not ashamed of myself . I don't have an army of snails but a variety of snails that do a specific job. They are thriving and reproducing in my tank.
 

Bucs20fan

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I have 1 mexican turbo snail in my tank (red sea 200xl) and I am not ashamed of myself . I don't have an army of snails but a variety of snails that do a specific job. They are thriving and reproducing in my tank.
+1 to this. I have a 60 breeder with 3 large turbos, 15 astreas, 5 ceriths, 3 trochus, and 20 misc red/ blue leg hermits. Along with 20 nassarius and 2 fighting conchs for the sand bed. Works out great.
 

polyppal

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Even tank with zero Po4 and zero No3 can still have GHA as they call it not a "true zero" as the Po4 is being consumed by the algae or sometimes I've also heard that the (live) rocks leech Po4.

zero nutrients is a problem not a solution. likely to lead to briopsys vs gha
 

X-37B

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I use mostly trochus snails. A few turbos but most turbos come from cooler water and dont live long at 80°f. This is my experience.

I use 2 snails per gallon as a rule. 1 per as a minimum.
GHA has to be short in order for snails to consume it so removing the long stuff helps.

Balancing import/export is the key to controling algae. Whatever your no3 and po4 read is what left from your export.
I keep my no3 at <3 and po4 at <.1.
This range has worked well to keep GHA in control.
 

Floyd-

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I use mostly trochus snails. A few turbos but most turbos come from cooler water and dont live long at 80°f. This is my experience.

I use 2 snails per gallon as a rule. 1 per as a minimum.
GHA has to be short in order for snails to consume it so removing the long stuff helps.
2 snails a gallon?! Thats insane. Even 1 a gallon is nuts. You saying that I need almost 200 snails for my tank! I have maybe 30-40 and they do the job just fine.
 

X-37B

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2 snails a gallon?! Thats insane. Even 1 a gallon is nuts. You saying that I need almost 200 snails for my tank! I have maybe 30-40 and they do the job just fine.
Yea its what I found works best for my systems. Snails are added when I remove the shells of dead ones. They dont live forever but I have some that are 3-4 years old.

When I broke down my 120 I had over 90 snails.

I run a minimum of 1 per gallon.
2 per gallon in my 20g nano cube as I have no skimmer and little export.

I have found that more snails are better than less over the years.
My 20g nano cube is 6 months old and last count was around 30 snails.
20220726_120015.jpg
 

TheSheff

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Are turbo snails the answer to Green Hair Algae plague?

Regardless of what tank, there will be doomed a day where GHA will happen in any tank.

Even tank with zero Po4 and zero No3 can still have GHA as they call it not a "true zero" as the Po4 is being consumed by the algae or sometimes I've also heard that the (live) rocks leech Po4.

Some folks went with the avenue of eliminating the root cause of nutrients / Po4 excessiveness by doing wetter skimming, Po4/No3 remover way but what if it's Zero and Zero? What do export out from zero?

I have heard few people have had success with deploying army of snails (mostly Mexican Turbo snails) in their tank to eliminate GHA problem. They've admitted that GHA cannot be stopped from happening but the solution is to have those snails to consume those GHA as their grow. Admittedly Turbos don't eat the long GHA therefore manual human intervention/trimming still required for the longer GHA and let the fresh growth to be controlled by the turbos.

Some have had success when they deploy 50 Turbo Snails in a 50 gallon tank (1 gallon = 1 snail guideline).

What's your take into this?

1659066745186.png
I've personally had a ton of luck with turbos. Recently added two to my 25 gallon and they took out almost all of the hair algae in a week, even the 1 inch long hair algae.
 
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