Snail growth

[jwarcop]

Evening,

Just wondering, is over 100 tiny snails a good or bad thing? I'm having a snail orgy I guess, it's only a 37 gallon tank and they are everywhere. I'm also have a tad GHA problem, so they have plenty to eat. Inhabitants in this tank, very simple.. No fish, 30lbs live rock, 1 brittle star, and 1 urchin. and about 15 or so crabs.

And quite a few thousand little white guys that scatter very quickly.

--Josh

 

[White Tiger]

100 or more tiny snails in a 37 gallon tank is a good occurence. The snails can help with biological filtration and clean the tank of algae.

 

[bertoni]

Most of them will likely starve to death over time, depending on the type of snail in question. For that size tank, I'd probably start with 12 snails or so. Snail don't really provide any filtration in the normal sense of the term.

 

[jwarcop]

bertoni, I only started with about 10. This little buggers have spawned in the tank.. Not much I could do about it..

They look like all Astraea snails. It may be a while before they starve with all the GHA.

--josh

 

[Hoggn]

sell them to us needy reefers...

 

[jwarcop]

I can certainly do that, just have to wait till they get a bit bigger.

 

[bertoni]

They spawned! Very cool, especially if they're eating the hair algae. They could also be a miniature species, though, so they might not grow much. Collonista spp snails do well in tanks quite often. They don't look like Astraea, though.

 

[White Tiger]

To bertoni:

The snails will die. However, most of them won't die since the snails jwarcop is describing are small tiny minute snails. He not talking about snails with a lenght of 1-2cm. In addition, snails do not filter the water. They actually pick up waste from other animals in the tank and digest the waste to remove the protein. As a result, the water if the tank will stay cleaner a little longer.

========P.S.==========
If jwarcop was describing snails that are 1-2cm then I am wrong about the # of snails that will die.

If jwarcop was describing snails that aren't scavengers, the I am wrong about the water being cleaner.