best way to kill sundial snails

[cook]

Seems I have a prob with sundial snails and Asterina. I found 2 adult and I think what are baby snails eating my alien eyes. Do they have any natural pred, what is the best way to kill them?

 

[Invso]

The best way would be to just remove them by hand.

 

[cook]

I have been but find more, maybe they are not sundial. I have foun adults but most of what Ifind are small and I can not be sure.

 

[czieler]

What's wrong w/ Asterina? Do they bother zoanthids?

I had never heard that..heck..I have two in my 46 gallon that I've been trying to figure out why zoanthids keep dying in it... if they could be the cause..I'll catch those suckers..pls advise..

 

[organism]

are you sure it's asterinas eating your zoos? very few actually eat corals, most are just harmless grazers, but will feed on dead or decaying corals

as for sundials, manual removal's pretty much it, they look pretty unique, so if you can match them to a pic they're probably the problem

 

[czieler]

Heh..at this point I'll remove anything questionable in my tank..sry to hijack the thread... I've been thinking about just tearing it down since no matter what I do..they seem to die w/in a week... after being fine in my other tank for months..

I just went and took out the two Asterinas that I had...I'll have to get a small frag of something and test it out again....I've already gone thru most of mine trying to get them to grow in there...the two frags I have left in my 65...I don't want to lose...

 

[cook]

Their is a pic on zoaid of a small asterinas eating zoas. I snails are so small it is hard to tell. I know what a sundial looks like and this may be them before they have much shell. The mouth part is the same. These can move fast though. I have senn them eating the zoas.

 

[czieler]

I find that tweezers work well if you can't get to it w/ your fingers... if they are in a crevice or something...

 

[cook]

Or a screwdriver so you can smash them.

 

[organism]

well, it may be that the asterinas are doing some damage, but they're not usually destructive. of course, it only takes that one bad variety of them to start eating corals, so it may be easier to just remove them...

have you tried just doing a series of dips on the colony to try and remove some of the snails that way? usually I find that shaking the heck out of the colony while it's in some freshwater and iodine will take off a bunch of the snails if they're smaller

 

[bobafett]

Unfortunately I have found that both the sundials and asterinas are very resilient to dips. The best way to get rid of them is look over the tank at night when the corals close up and remove them by hand or tweezer.

 

[organism]

well, it's not so much the dipping as much as shaking the heck out of the colony while it's in the freshwater to loosen up a few of them, I also put a medium seio in the dip bucket and use it to high pressure blast them off of there too