Snail complaint

[Doug]

So I decided to mix up the snails in my recent livestock order. Never again.
I dont know whats so attractive about either margarita or astrea snails. I have had it with picking them up to put back upright. What a pain.

I usually stick to larger type turbo,s. Trochus snails are the best I have ever had. Good algae eaters and the ability to flip themselves over. Plus I still have some that are several years old, plus some larger unknown turbo snails that must be even older.

Several of the new smaller snails, besides creating work for me, have died already. Bad enough my 3 new peppermints never even made it much over a week.

Anyways, I will stick to trochus from now on and I ordered kalk to deal with the job the shrimp were to do. And removed my sandbed after deciding it was a waste of time and had to buy more to look after it.

On a good side note, the 30 small cerith snails I bought seem to be doing a good job and taking care of themselves.

[AquaticFinatic]

I like cerith more as they are good little workers. No flipping either.

[toytech]

Ceriths are great all around , and astreas have been great for me too , both the regular and the spiny shelled . Turbos on the other hand i find a pain , mine have never been self righting and there bull dosers . I just had a turbo die in my frag tank and i dont know what it is about them but my god they smell terrible when there dead , and when my heater let go a while back my house smelled like snail stink for a week and a half .

[Northernseacorals]

If they flip over I just let the hermits kill them for the new shells... I know that sounds super mean; but I cannot be bothered to be the snail police.

[Delphinus]

Same here. There are a bunch of species that just probably shouldn't even be offered, the mortality is way too high, and their effectiveness at grazing is probably questionable at best. Trochus, turbos, and cerith are my favourites too. The downer with turbos though is still you buy 10 and you'll end up with 3-4 that make it. And even in my 300g-ish tank I can tell when a snail has kicked off, they put a spike on the bioload for sure.

[Doug]

I usually stick with Trochus Tony, unless there is a turbo sale close by. I still have a few I bought from Red Coral a couple years ago. The trochus seem to graze as well as any, are long lived and can flip themselves over.