Snails added to sump

[Vorog]

Was curious if I can add some turbo snails to my sump refugium, without worry if they will get caught in a pump or cause issues and overflow the sump. I have a bit of cotton candy algae growing and I heard that Mexican turbos will take care of it. I was curious if I add maybe some egg create to the sump that will keep them from going out of the refugium? Thoughts on this?


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[mcgyvr]

All depends...
Its certainly possible that a snail gets into the inlet of a skimmer or pump... But that 100% depends on the size of the inlet/snail,etc..

If you are concerned and can't answer the question yourself then its best to block access

 

[Vorog]

All depends...
Its certainly possible that a snail gets into the inlet of a skimmer or pump... But that 100% depends on the size of the inlet/snail,etc..

That's what I was thinking, I have a couple big turbo snails about the size of a golf ball that I was thinking would do the trick and the egg create would keep them from going to the skimmer or return pump.


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[anthonys51]

i had a snail clog my skimmer, didnt do any harm, but i took it out of the sump

 

[AlSimmons]

You'll want to make sure they won't interfere with your ATO set up as well. (if you have one) I wasn't thinking ahead one time and put a couple snails in my sump. Being that I don't have any baffles one of them decided to camp out on my float valve and this caused my ATO reservoir to empty. Everything survived, but it took a few days before things were back to normal.

 

[anthonys51]

i also cleaned my skimmer last night and found 10-15 baby trochus snails, so i am not really sure if i can keep them out anyway

 

[Vorog]

I do have a ATO, I have the tunze osmolator, that is in my return section of my sump. I was thinking egg crate may keep them from getting into the return section. Also, this will be a temporary thing as once they clean up the place they can go back to the DT.


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[tjnorthdakota]

not sure if they eat that particular kind of algae but I know a lot of people keep urchins in their sump for algae control, might be worth looking into and they are less likely to cause problems with pump inlets and escaping to other compartments

 

[Vorog]

I did consider other types of inverts to add to the sump. But I did read that Mexican turbos eat that red hair algae. I am going to try this with the egg crate and large snails, however, I will do this on some days off where I can monitor things just in case. Also I will pull out as much as I can by hand to help.


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