phils514

Hi, I have a 2o gallon tank and have 3 fish. I also have a few blue leg crabs and a cleaner shrimp. I recently bought Ilyanassa absoleta snails. The fewest they had in ebay was 50 for $15 so i got them. My question is, is 50 snails too much? and if so, what should i do?

Tommy Gun

Welcome to the forum!

I am going to step out on a limb here and assume that your description of a 'cleaner shrimp' would mean that this is saltwater tank? At least I really hope so. If you did not see it, there is a saltwater 'branch' of this forum and you could probrably get more attention there for questions on this tank.

These snails are often touted as the best! At least in my area anyways. They are also called Nassarius snails I think. Anyways, the more the merrier is generally the advice as far as a clean up crew but this is all with keeping things in perspective. I would say 50 is getting up there as far as being close to having too many. Maybe you could benifit from trading some of these snails for other types like trochus or turbo snails.

This also all depends on what types of fish you have. I assume you know what you are doing and that your three fish are not going to snack on the snails. I would also say that as hermit crabs get larger, they are more apt to eat snails. You can control their growth somewhat by offering only slightly larger shells here and there. However, they will die prematurely if they cannot move up into larger accomodations.

In my 90 gallon tank, I have about 50 blue legged hermits, and about 7 to 10 red legged reef hermits. Both will eat different things, including different types of algae. I would also suggest getting an emerald crab as they are really benificial for most people who want to control hair algae. I bring this up because maybe you can make some trades with all of those snails you just bought for other benificial critters. I would keep about 20 of them myself...maybe even less. I have 12 snails of various types in my tank right now and they are running the tank almost completely clean of algea on the glass and live rock.

phils514

thanks, what if i leave 20-25 snails in the tank and get an in-tank breeding net and keep the rest in there? would that help?

for your info. I have 2 clown fish and a chromis and yes, I have a saltwater tank.

Tommy Gun

I think that keeping the snails in a breeding tank would hurt them more than it would help you. If they are in the tank, might as well let them roam around and eat at will. I really think that you could find an LFS that would trade you for them or at least give you some store credit. In my area, I would pay about 10 dollars for four of them so I know that they are not always as cheap as you picked them up for. I found it a really big help to sort of 'network' with the LFS in my area for situations like this. In the past, I have traded a lot of fish as my plans and goals changed and while I did lose some money on them, I still got store credit and in some cases, was able to trade one fish for another, or even two.

Just wanted to make sure about the salty tank or not. Like I said, check out the saltwater portion of this forum. It is just above the planted forum right here: http://www.fishtankforums.com/6-salt...ish-tank-forum You can get some more saltwater spacific information there which can help you weed out the other information that may differ from freshwater fish tanks.