How many snails to buy... dont want to starve them

trevorspencer94 · Feb 12, 2016

Hi everyone, I have a 29g biocube thats definitely past completion of its cycle and I have diatoms growing here and there, all over, so I think its time to buy a cuc, i am planning on doing a snail only crew. I contacted reefcleaners.org and that guy told me I should get 20 Dwarf Ceriths, 6 Nassarius, 8 Florida Ceriths, and 8 Nerites for my cuc for an eventual 5 nano-fish reef tank. (only an ocellaris and a royal gramma basslet in the tank right now). I feel like this many snails is just destined to be too many after the diatoms are cleared up... I dont want to have a bunch of die off and have a spike take place in my tank. I hear when you order snails from there they usually send you like 100 dwarf ceriths or more pretty much regardless of how many you order too haha.. So i guess im asking what you guys think i should do? There is like a $1 difference from ordering his suggested list to ordering like half of it, thats what makes me contemplate this issue a lot also..

cloak · Feb 12, 2016

For that size tank I would probably go with three of those Banded Trochus snails & maybe a couple Scarlet hermit crabs as well. Use something like a Mag-Float to keep the glass clean and stir up your sand bed once every 2 weeks or so right before a water change. When your tank becomes more mature you can probably go longer before you need to clean the sand bed. Don't forget, the best janitor that tank will ever see is you.. GL.

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=497+526+564&pcatid=564

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=497+501+620&pcatid=620

trevorspencer94 · Feb 12, 2016

Thanks for the advice, but I'm wanting to go snail only!

cloak · Feb 12, 2016

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Maybe instead of the hermits you could add a couple of those larger Tongan Nassarius snails. These are fun to watch and they do a good job at cleaning up the scraps. Don't expect them to keep your sand bed clean though. GL.

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=497+526+1763&pcatid=1763