how bad is it to bump the snails off the glass?

[sadie]

I've never had so many TINY little snail everywhere.  I can't use my glass cleaner w/o bumping off a few snails.  But I wasn't sure if this was bad for them or not.  So I figured I'd ask.

[Tired]

Shouldn't be too bad for them, no. If snails died of being jostled off, they'd go extinct. The little ones can't hold on strongly enough to get hurt by being pulled off, I don't think. Big ones might be able to. 

 

Do you know what kind they are? I'd be curious if your introduced snails bred, or if you just have lots of collonista snails.

[sadie]

I think they are all dwarf cerith.  I ordered a 16 gal package that came with a variety of snails.  They usually send a little extra, but there are sooo many!  I was thinking they might have bred, but I didn't see any eggs or any proof of it, but that doesn't mean they didn't.

 

It is just the tiny ones that get bumped off.  I try not too, but they are so tiny and so many!

 

thanks

[Tired]

Ah, you got 'em from ReefCleaners? They send about a million extra dwarf ceriths. 

 

Don't worry too much about it. Snails in the ocean get knocked around way worse if they're knocked off something, what with all the waves.

[billygoat]

2 hours ago, Tired said:

Don't worry too much about it. Snails in the ocean get knocked around way worse if they're knocked off something, what with all the waves.

Amen to this. Go ahead and bump those little guys. The bigger the snail, the higher the risk you will hurt them by knocking them off the glass; those little dwarf ceriths are at zero risk for injury by being knocked off by your algae scraper.

 

Just make sure they don't land on top of something that will eat them! 😁

[Garf]

My snails love it, I bump them off and somewhile later, they climb back up to do it again!

 

Not an issue unless they are the type of snails that can't right themselves, those you will have to flip over.