Help:Snails

[Mikey1]

HI All

I have a Aqua Medic Percula 90 running for about one year now with a small selection of corals but mainly fish.

About 2 months ago i started noticing tiny snails about a half cm across I went to ask my lfs what this is and they reckoned it could be my turbo snails having babies.
They are tiny and have a hard outer like the larger snail's and like a small swirly crust.

However now at night when the blue light is on I suddenly have about 200 of them all over the back wall and rocks?

Whether or not it helps the tank ( there is no algea at all) i am not sure but it is becoming real unsightly.

I recently added a small wrasse hoping that he could eat some as advised by my lfs but no chance there are too many.

I wonder if any one else has had this problem and what i coud do?

Any help would be appriciated.

Thanks
Mike

 

[Blinky]

Are they brown and white? I've got those in all my SW tanks, they hitchhiked in on the LR. They're good algae eaters, won't hurt a thing IME. If you've got too many, that could be a sign of high nutrients - snails usually multiply in relation to their food supply, and higher nutrients = more algae for them to eat. The reason you see no algae may be because they're consuming it. If they're unsigntly, you could remove them by hand, but I'd leave them be. Just thinking out loud, I could be wrong.

 

[mogurnda]

I agree that they are probably some kind of hitchhiker. Hard to say if they are good or bad without a photo. I got quite a few whelks (which are bad!) with my LR, and they can reproduce in tanks. Another possibility is pyramidellid snails, which can also be bad news.

If you're lucky, they're just ceriths, which are great little grazers.

You might google the above names to see if they look like yours, or check out www.reefs.org/hhfaq/. If you think they might be whelks, Ron Shimek has an article in this months reefkeeping.