How many margarita snails?

[Zoa_Fanatic]

I have a biocube 32 LED with a current cuc of 7 astrea, 4 cerith, and 5-8 nassarius (I have no idea how many I have they breed all the time), and 3 hermits (1 dwarf red leg, 2 dwarf blue legs). I have a lot of red slime and dust algea still and he hair algea is slowly being eaten by the astreas but I have a lot left still. Can anyone tell me how many maragrita snails my tank can support? I mainly need one for glass cleaning.

parameters:

pH-8.2
Ammonia-0
Nitrate-15 ppm
Nitrite-0
Temp-78 F (constant)
Salinity-1.025

 

[andrewey]

I see no one has answered this- I'll take a crack at it. Unfortunately, the population of snails a particular tank can support is largely driven by available resources. This is why it's very common for people to dump large amounts of snails into their tank (usually as part of a "invert package"), only to find half or more die within a few months. They are simply equalizing to the "carrying capacity" of the tank. Therefore, you have a couple options here- one would be to add a lot of snails and let their numbers stabilize (this seems awfully cruel to me, but it's a common approach none the less). The other would be to add a few at a time and see if your clean up needs are being met. The catch here is that a CUC is unlikely to ever eradicate an issue on their own- they are a tool to help keep our tanks clean, but they rely on us to keep nutrients in check, limit overfeeding, maintain conditions that don't promote nuisance algaes and bacterias, etc.

If I were in your shoes, I would probably add around 3-5 margarita snails and see how things progress. It's always easier to add more later, but pinning down an exact number is next to impossible.

Happy reefing!

 

[Zoa_Fanatic]

I see no one has answered this- I'll take a crack at it. Unfortunately, the population of snails a particular tank can support is largely driven by available resources. This is why it's very common for people to dump large amounts of snails into their tank (usually as part of a "invert package"), only to find half or more die within a few months. They are simply equalizing to the "carrying capacity" of the tank. Therefore, you have a couple options here- one would be to add a lot of snails and let their numbers stabilize (this seems awfully cruel to me, but it's a common approach none the less). The other would be to add a few at a time and see if your clean up needs are being met. The catch here is that a CUC is unlikely to ever eradicate an issue on their own- they are a tool to help keep our tanks clean, but they rely on us to keep nutrients in check, limit overfeeding, maintain conditions that don't promote nuisance algaes and bacterias, etc.

If I were in your shoes, I would probably add around 3-5 margarita snails and see how things progress. It's always easier to add more later, but pinning down an exact number is next to impossible.

Happy reefing!

I ended up adding two small ones about the size of quarters. I think all told the number of snails I have with those two will be ok. I’m going to increase the white light time to make sure they always have algea to eat. But so far no problems and no deaths and I’ve had quiet a few snails for months now

 

[andrewey]

I ended up adding two small ones about the size of quarters. I think all told the number of snails I have with those two will be ok. I’m going to increase the white light time to make sure they always have algea to eat. But so far no problems and no deaths and I’ve had quiet a few snails for months now

Sounds like a good plan! Happy reefing and 4th of July!