Snail help!

[CU kills]

I am having trouble keeping larger snail species. I have three nerite snails which are thriving, but have lost over eight turbos, and four tiger cowrie(sp) in the last four months. My corals are all healthy (including two SPS) and my three damsels and clown are swimming in all levels. All the snails have survived for about a week than died. Everytime the tank perameters have been perfect, and there is plenty of algae. The nerites are not able to keep up with the algae growth. Please help?

 

[CadetMKultra]

All of my glass cruising snails kept dying while my sand bed snails were mostly fine. Couldn't figure it out for the longest. Turned out that one of my fish had learned to pull them off of the glass and toss them. It was my little molly miller blenny. He would toss them, and then the hermits would pull them open and eat them.

 

[CU kills]

none of my fish are large enough to pull a three inch wide snail from the wall. They will move around like they are healthy and happy and than about 1 week later I come home from work and the large snails will be dead on their backs and the three little nerites will be crusing along just fine.

 

[alleykat81]

Guy from reefcleaners.org told me that turbos have a very specific diet and don't always do well in every tank. I've had the same problem with the larger snails. All empty shells.

 

[CU kills]

That could be it. My reef club is going to be doing a group buy. So I am going to pick up some more nerites and a few ceriths along with a few hermits.

 

[Mariner]

Hard to say for sure, but it is possible that they are not getting enough of what they specifically need to eat -- even though there's a lot of algae.
Also, it sounds like the snails that you are losing are pretty large; too large perhaps for a 10g tank. I'd say the cowrie is for sure.
FWIW,
Mariner

 

[CU kills]

Has my signature tank not been changed. My current tank is a 35 not the 10. I only had two at the most at anytime.

 

[jhempel]

I too have had some problems with keeping larger snails. I have had people tell me that snails prefer salinity at 1.026 but that didn't seem to change things. I have also heard that they just aren't an animal with a long life expectancy and you really don't know how old they are when you get them.

I wish I knew.

 

[Trav81]

I can't keep turbo's alive in my 29 gallon tank. Astrea's do alright till they fall over and can't get back up. Then they die.