Too many snails a bad thing?

[Krypt1979]

Last weekend my brother and I tore down his old 55 gal tank in preparation for an upgrade to a 75 for him. I took his rock home to store in my QT tank until we get all the plumbing done, and that's when I noticed something very unusual.

I happened to walk by the QT around midnight and when I flipped the lights on, there were a couple hundred snails crawling over everything! Upon closer inspection, they appear to be mini turbo snails. He did have several of the larger size ones in his tank and it looks like they spawned and a TON of them survived.

Is this a bad thing that there are so many? Should I be removing as many as I can or just leave them alone? All those snails drawing calc out of the water can't be a good thing. My brother has had consistent troubles keeping LPS and other softies, could this be a source of that problem?

 

[oneradtek202]

they will come and go, i had this for a long time, then they never were seen again. i dont think its a pest that you are talking about. eventually this phase will pass with the tank and they will be gone.


want them gone faster? get a wrasse lol

 

[Krypt1979]

If they are Turbos and there is sufficient algae, won't they stick around? They all have fully developed shells, and look to have been growing for quite a while. They are all around 1/8in. in diameter and are happily munching away on whatever is available.

My thinking was that they may be bad. With that many snails trying to grow their shells bigger, would it put a strain on the calc/alk balance of his tank? Could that be why he's having trouble keeping corals?

 

[tmz]

I don't think that many will survive starvation in a 75 g tank unless it has high nutrients and lots of diatoms and phytoplankton . If that's the case then they will help keep it clean. I don't exactly know what type of snails these are . A picture would help.
The nutrients may have been the issue affecting corals in your brothers tank,particularly if it was high in PO4 which would inhibit calcification .
I wouldn't be concerned about calcium ,carbonate ,magnesium consumption.Dosing can easily handle it. The corals are likely to require more than the snails..

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

first step

first step

properly identify the snails

 

[vetdog]

too many is def a bad thing. If there is not enough food they will die off. As the die and degrade they will release ammonia into your tank

 

[SushiGirl]

Sounds like Collonista snails. They'll self-regulate in population according to available food.

 

[MAVX]

I was about to make a thread about the same thing, I have hundreds of tiny snails and they've been getting bigger in my 120.

 

[Krypt1979]

I've been trying to get a picture of one of them, but even my best camera gives nothing but a small blur you can barely tell is a snail. I'll have to cruise google and see if I can find the snails I've got.

 

[SushiGirl]

Google Collonista snail.

 

[Krypt1979]

Thanks for the ID Sushi Girl, I googled them after your first post and I didn't find a match in the images. However when I went and did a second look through, I found them. That's what I got and according to multiple sites they are reef safe and fine.