snails Share your thoughts

[Briney Dave]

Snails: you know them and love them
but which is best for what

For example what is the best
hair algae eater
cyano eater
ect.
which could you just not keep alive for what ever reason
which ones have done the best reproducing in your tank?

your pal
briney dave

 

[surfn]

Snails: you know them and love them
but which is best for what

For example what is the best
hair algae eater
cyano eater
ect.
which could you just not keep alive for what ever reason
which ones have done the best reproducing in your tank?

your pal
briney dave

i havent had much luck with astrea snails helping, and surviving. once they land on their back they are toast.

jumbo/tongan nasarius snails are the BEST snails i've ever had!! stir up the sand very nicely.

small aquacultured conchs (queen and fighting) are also very helpful, but you need to make sure you have enough algae to keep them alive. they do a good job munching on hair algaes and other algaes.

nerite snails seem to be rather useless, cool to look at though. lay alot of eggs around the tank but never seen them develop into anything.

i really like trochus snails, but have had trouble finding them. last ones i got from live aquaria all died out pretty quickly. otherwise they survive well.

margarita snails...eh....never had any luck keeping them alive long term, kinda wimpy like astrea snails.

turbo snails.....obviously great if you have enough algae for them, and a big tank, AND you dont mind your corals be knocked all over the place.

i also have very small cerith snails that breed in my tank. i easily have hundreds if not thousands of them. most of the time i dont see them, but then all of a sudden they will come out if they smell food. but they normally come out at night.

 

[anomie]

I've never seen any of my snails munch on cyno or hair algae. My albsolute favorite of all snails (so far) are stomatellas (sp?). They breed like crazy and can flip themselves over. I haven't seen them on the glass, but they are all over the rocks.

 

[SteveO]

Ive seen astrea munch on HA

 

[Stixbaraca]

No snails will much on cyano unfortunately because it isn't an algae! I used to have Trocus, and they are great, and reproduced for me. I think you can still get them from IPSF.com

 

[SteveO]

In regards to cyano, nassarius can be usefull because they can stir it up, but nothing will actually eat it.

 

[Randy]

I have some unnamed turbos that only come out at night and they breed like rabbits.That seem to do a good job on the glass.I have not found much that will do anything with cyano or hair algae other than removing it by hand.

 

[rackyrane]

Randy,
Are you snail collonista's by any chance. Not sure on the spelling, but I have some turbo like snails that only come out at night. Looked them up and they are collonistas. Supposedly beneficial guys.

 

[bngowe]

my thoughts, turbos work pretty well but get soo annoying when they knock over all my frags!.

i gave them all away and got a sea hare instead, assuming that it wouldn't knock over anything...well...his fat butt can't help but knock over things as well.. just a lot less often than the turbos. =/

 

[Randy]

From every thing I have found they don't have a name yet.they only get aboutthe size of a penny when full grown.90% of the ones I have are the size of @ or a bit larger.Thay don't knock things around like the real turbos do.i will see if I can find a pic.

 

[Randy]

this is a large one.

 

[edwing206]

The reason for margarita snails dying in tank is because they belong in cool water, around 72 degrees.

 

[Briney Dave]

I have always been a fan of the turbos also,
I try to super glue frags on when ever possible so I don't get too much knocked over but still the little devils can be a pain.

I have seen a couple dozen egg nests in my 30 over the past few months. I am guessing though that my clown is eating the hatching larva because the total population has not gotten younger or grown in number LOL

a couple of my general bio classes will be doing growth research for Brian at Project DIBS which is pretty cool although the species are what most people are already keeping (sort of the point of the experiements)

with over 50,000 different species I was just wondering if people kept any "out of the norm" groups.

 

[d.grcich]

The tittle of this thread disturbs me--"snails Share your thoughts"

If snails share our thoughts then I wonder what else they can do.

 

[vetteman]

The tittle of this thread disturbs me--"snails Share your thoughts"

If snails share our thoughts then I wonder what else they can do.

Yep..... I was just thinkin of looking for free ****...looked over my shoulder and there were snails all over the glass trying to look at my monitor :hammer:

 

[Briney Dave]

Yikes, thats my bad LOL

 

[Driftwood]

I was thinking that if snails shared our thoughts then they must not pay them much attention. Because back in the hair algae days they wouldn't touch the stuff and that was definately one of my strongest thoughts at the time!

Favorite snail of mine is the stomatella snail. Because they look cool and I didn't pay for them. Free stuff is always better!

Sea hares will eat cyano and hair algae. Putting one in a tank with powerheads is like putting a goldfish in an Oscar tank though. Death is almost guaranteed!

Dave

 

[Azurel]

Snail are perverts then......Or is it me? LOL....I like Collenistas(SP?), and stomatella's as well I have about a 100's maybe of both of them......The Stomas really do a great job....