How many snails/crabs/what type

[guitarfreak11]

How many snails and what type of snails should i put in my oceanic 90g bowfront? I have two small turbos now. I am thinking two more. What else? I want some nassarius for sure....maybe 5? How many cerith, astreas...what else? I am thinking hermits i just dont want them killing my snails. Give me some tips please


Thank you!

Adam

 

[shrinky]

Unless you're packing the tank with snails, I don't think you can wrong - I think the two turbos are enough of them, as they will eventually start bulldozing through your tank.

Why don't you try tossing 10-20 of each in and see how it goes? A 90 gallon is pretty big for relatively small-sized nassarius/cerith/astreas, so I would bet 30-60 of them would be great to start out with. After all, you'll probably lose a number of them due to natural causes, and it's always easy to add more if you feel the tank needs better natural cleaning.

 

[guitarfreak11]

Very true. Thank you very much!

 

[mamagoose45]

A good rule to live by on the hermits killing the snails...buy a bunch of miscellaneous sized empty hermit shells and toss them into the tank. If the crabs have shells to move into as they get bigger, it seems to help with the snail murder rate - they won't kill them and steal the shells. You can usually pick up bags of shells from most LFS and can always order them online from most vendors.

 

[shrinky]

I just wanted to note that to this day I don't think i've ever witnessed one of my hermits killing a snail for it's shell. If anything, the most snail abuse I've seen is from my tiger pistol, who LOVES flipping them, draggin them into his cave, and then decorating. That being said, I agree with mamagoose - if you make a large enough purchase, most LFSs will toss in empty shells... if not, go to a craft store and buy/boil some shells and drop them in the tank.

 

[guitarfreak11]

Yeah i picked up two more turbos, 8 astreas, 10 cerith, and 5 hermits with five extra shells....All these snails were all i could find at three different lfs's!!!!!! it was pretty sad. I was really looking for some nass snails but couldn't find any and no one had any more cerith haha.