Long story short I picked myself up a pair of Trochus snails awhile back to add to my cleanup crew after hearing of there reputation for being algae lawnmowers. The snails have been in my tank for about 6 months give or take and have been doing great.
Everything has been peachy until about a month ago I noticed what I thought was a larger than usual copepod, I have a good copepod population and figured it was just a larger specimen cruising around on the front glass of my DT. Upon further inspection I began to notice it was actually an extremely small snail! At the time I couldn't tell what it was due to the fact that I have two other species of snail in my tank, (turbo, conch) so I just kept an eye on it and didn't think much of it, I actually figured it would get eaten by a fish or sucked into the overflow and I wouldn't see it again but I was wrong...
Over the next week or two he just kept growing until I was sure it was a trochus snail, and since my face was constantly pressed nearly against the glass while I was inspecting him I began to notice movement on my live rock and what do you know? It was dozens upon dozens of other baby trochus snails!!
Fast forward to present day I figured most of them would die off and I wouldn't have to worry about it. At first I was excited (and still kind of am) because this is an obvious sign of a healthy tank plus the fact that my snails are breeding/reproducing but now they have all grown considerably in size and I don't think I've seen a dead snail yet! In fact I think my snails are continuing to reproduce because I'm still spotting a lot of very small snails here and there. I've lost count at around 50-60 snails and I'm sure there's at least over a hundred in my tank as we speak!
Point being is I'm now at a crossroads and I feel like I need to take action of some sort. I don't want my tank crashing once the food (algae) is unable to sustain this massive population so what should I do? I'm sure there are people out there out there who have dealt with this situation so I'm curious as to what steps were taken to handle this snail outbreak.
I've thought of several options myself, should I...
- Try to sell/give them away to my LFS? I would give them away to local
reefers but I don't know anyone in my area and I haven't tried to
reach out in any particular way.
- I've also thought of throwing a couple hermits in my tank to clean up
my clean up crew if you know what I mean... :twitch:
I'm open to any other suggestions, thanks guys.
Everything has been peachy until about a month ago I noticed what I thought was a larger than usual copepod, I have a good copepod population and figured it was just a larger specimen cruising around on the front glass of my DT. Upon further inspection I began to notice it was actually an extremely small snail! At the time I couldn't tell what it was due to the fact that I have two other species of snail in my tank, (turbo, conch) so I just kept an eye on it and didn't think much of it, I actually figured it would get eaten by a fish or sucked into the overflow and I wouldn't see it again but I was wrong...
Over the next week or two he just kept growing until I was sure it was a trochus snail, and since my face was constantly pressed nearly against the glass while I was inspecting him I began to notice movement on my live rock and what do you know? It was dozens upon dozens of other baby trochus snails!!
Fast forward to present day I figured most of them would die off and I wouldn't have to worry about it. At first I was excited (and still kind of am) because this is an obvious sign of a healthy tank plus the fact that my snails are breeding/reproducing but now they have all grown considerably in size and I don't think I've seen a dead snail yet! In fact I think my snails are continuing to reproduce because I'm still spotting a lot of very small snails here and there. I've lost count at around 50-60 snails and I'm sure there's at least over a hundred in my tank as we speak!
Point being is I'm now at a crossroads and I feel like I need to take action of some sort. I don't want my tank crashing once the food (algae) is unable to sustain this massive population so what should I do? I'm sure there are people out there out there who have dealt with this situation so I'm curious as to what steps were taken to handle this snail outbreak.
I've thought of several options myself, should I...
- Try to sell/give them away to my LFS? I would give them away to local
reefers but I don't know anyone in my area and I haven't tried to
reach out in any particular way.
- I've also thought of throwing a couple hermits in my tank to clean up
my clean up crew if you know what I mean... :twitch:
I'm open to any other suggestions, thanks guys.
