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Cultivated Reef

Damn, snails be lazy!


Partially Submerged

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Partially Submerged

I have a 21g tank that's fairly new but stocked with stuff from two smaller tanks. Semi-established. So I have had some diatoms and some hair algae. I have a small porcelain anemone crab, a few snails, and a bunch of great hitchhikers (mainly brittle stars, stomatellae, and the usual wormy and wiggly stuff). I don't feed, except a piece of shrimp or flake food for the crab occasionally.

 

Now, I just added a few more snails because I just don't see them make a dent in the algae at all. Quite honestly, I have never noticed significant effect from snails in the tank. I feel the stomatellae are more useful than the regular snails, but even they pick at things like a New Yorker at a Louisiana crawfish boil. Mind you, I am not expecting them to get rid of any algae for me. I am just talking about maintenance.

 

What's your experience? Does your cleanup crew really clean up? How many snails per gallon do you have?

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I have a 20 gallon and got about 9 cerith snail and 1 margarita snail. They ate up my diatoms within a week and some algae. It is pristine clean right now and I'm more afraid of them starving.

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Partially Submerged

Hm, I might want to up my cerith population. Maybe I just don't have enough snails. What about hermits? Do they do any actual work?

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Hm, I might want to up my cerith population. Maybe I just don't have enough snails. What about hermits? Do they do any actual work?

I've got probably about 20 dwarf ceriths (along with a gazillion babies), 9 trochus, some nerites, a few nassarius and two scarlet reef hermits. In a 29 biocube! I probably overdid it a bit, but I don't see the population dwindling. My tank is pretty new still (set up in January) and I started getting some cyano patches about two months ago. I upped my cerith population then and they really took care of it. The trochus and nerites really seem to keep the rock clean too. Bad part is they are constantly knocking off my glued frags.

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