I got a couple trochus at Gold's locally.

i got a custodian package from J&L and the Astrea and Margarita snials all died. the only ones i have left are the Cerith snails. i have a sand bed though.

I don't understand how a snail species can exist that can't flip itself over. Seems like an evolutionary dead-end.

personally, I stopped flipping my astreas a long time ago. I find that they are only goners when a hungry hermit gets them before they flip over.

on my barebottom tank, they have no problem flipping over...

margaritas tho, they climb right out of the water and die.

trochus are great. I bought 15 of them 8 months ago, I have 15 still (just moved them downstairs).

I bought over 60 astreas... maybe 25 left.

60 margaritas... 0 left.

60 ceriths... 30 left.

20 nassarius... dunno how many left, but some...

i had one that got flipped over right in front of my galaxy coral. ZAP got stung to death. HAHA stupid snails.

I agree with the trochus being the hardiest, probably the most attractive as well.

I also have hundreds of small, flattened-chinese-hat looking snails, almost like a limpet, that come out at night. What kind of snail would this be?

I would put a few turbo's in there.. best I have found yet at taking care of algae. I got a mix of turbo's astrea and certh. I don't waist my time with margareta snails anymore as they just die.

Steve

Captain Clever... those are probably stomatella snails. Very cool little critters.. although I dunno how effective they are at algae control...

Got Trochus at Gold Aquariums. Red-ringed ones for $2.99 a pop.