do mystery snails eat algae?

[Flying_Diamond]

gah. i meant eat. =/

anyway, i know pretty much nothing about inverts, but my boyfriend has two blue mystery snails in his 45, and i have an algae problem. i was wondering if they ate algae, because if so, i'm going to borrow them for a few weeks to clean up my tanks. thanks. :]

[Somervell]

They will, but they aren't the best snail choice for algae, IMHO. I have ramshorns and nerites in mine, and my tanks used to have algae, but don't, thanks to the snails.

[Flying_Diamond]

well, i have what i believe are ramshorns in one of my tanks, but i don't really want to put one in my snail free tanks because they can reproduce by themselves, can't they?

[KatelynC]

i would go with nerites for algae issues. They gobble it right up

[Somervell]

Ramshorns are extremely prolific under most circumstances. I agree with KatelynC-- nerites are a better option in terms of population control and probably better algae eaters.

[Flying_Diamond]

alright. thank you very much!

[ZSandmann]

I've never seen Nerites in a freshwater tank, cool.

[jpappy789]

Yep, brigs are not efficient algae eaters at all.

[Lupin]

See this thread on ways to control the population of ramshorns and other prolific "pest" snails.
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=182687

If you want nerites, they need to be supplemented with extra algae that you can culture as supplementing them with anything else is quite tricky. My brigs eat only the green hair algae. Never seen them eating diatoms and green film algae. I am sure they do but my nerites and ramshorns do a better job cleaning them up than the brigs.