what is your favorite snail to eat green algae?

[fungia]

i am getting algae again since my snail population has dropped when i added a harlequen tuskfish in my tank a few months ago. i plan to remove him and add more snails. i have short green and brown hair algae, some of it almost looks transparent. what snails do you like to use to control this kind of algae?

 

[Sponge_Bob]

Astreas are good and I have some in my tank but a Kole Tang is quite effective. Spends his days feeding off those algae. You might want to consider this addition to your tank. It's also a beautiful fish and easy to care for.

HTH

 

[GSchiemer]

I like Astraea spp. snails as well but I'm more curious about your Harlequin Tuskfish. Have you actually seen it consume snails or are you just assuming it's the Tuskfish that's responsibe for their deaths? I ask because I have a Tuskfish for many years and I've never seen it eat a snail. Exactly how does your fish "eat" snails?

Greg

 

[Anonymous]

Mexican Turbo's = game over.
_________________
Mercedes 35 hp

 

[fungia]

i have not seen my harlequin eat snails but since i got him i went from 40 snails to maybe 4 or 5 left. maybe it is a coincidence, all i know is i need to buy more snails

 

[GSchiemer]

Mexican turbos are temperate water snails and bulldozers = not recommended.

 

[Meloco14]

My experience with turbos has been iffy. I have bought a few that have been great and lived for over a year. Many I have bought have died within days. As Greg mentioned, I believe this is due to being collected mainly from Mexico, in cooler water than my tank is. I have also heard this is the case with margaritas. The best success I've had with snails has been the captive raised ones from ipsf. They seem to do well and the little strombus reproduce all the time.

 

[Nautilus1]

I like the Nerite snails. They really polish the glass

 

[MartinE]

Astraea get my vote as well they are always working the reef

 

[GSchiemer]

i have not seen my harlequin eat snails but since i got him i went from 40 snails to maybe 4 or 5 left. maybe it is a coincidence, all i know is i need to buy more snails

So, are you still going to remove the tuskfish, even though you've never seen it eat a snail? Perhaps there are other reasons for the death of your snails, such as water quality. You wouldn't want to buy snails only to have them die again, so you should try to figure out why they died in the first place.

BTW, what type of snails did you buy originally? And what size is your aquarium? How about your salinity, temperature, alkalinity, phosphates, nitrates? These can all present issues with snails.

 

[Anonymous]

Mexican turbos are temperate water snails and bulldozers = not recommended.

Ditto on that. They are more like fertilizer that you drop in once a while, and before it goes to snail heaven, it will push all my corals over to the sand bed. Hate it since my tank is 30 inch tall, and I don't have a long arm :x

 

[fungia]

i think i will keep the tuskfish, i think my snails might have been temperate water too and they died from being in my reef. i remember i had some turbo, not sure from where. i also had small cerith and nerite snails and some red foot snails.

are trochus okay?

 

[Meloco14]

The trochus I've gotten from ipsf were good. But I have only ordered them once so I don't have a whole lot of experience with them. I like nerites too, but they kept climbing out of my tank and every morning I'd have to pick them up off the floor and put them back in. They must be a tidal area snail or something.