Problem with big snails

[Viet-tin]

All my trochus snails have become hermit food...slowly one by one they would fall over and the hermits would get them. Ive never had any problems with my cerith snails, nass snails and have plenty of stomatella snails that are doing good. Ive even had trouble with emerald crabs mine all died...only water quality issues im having is my phosphates. I bought the snails to help munch on bryopsis and hair algae but they hardly touch the stuff. Any ideas as to whats going on?

[Crab Rangoon]

Were your trochus actually large? I typically don't come across matured ones, and usually see them at Astrea-size. Either way, if you're purchasing larger snails, as opposed to have snails that have just blossomed into a big size, take much longer for acclimation. The larger the snail, the more sensitive it is to change, and many times people even lose their turbo's to this stress, weeks after acclimation. If you take about an hour to acclimate the usual new invert additions, try acclimating your larger snails for 2-3hrs instead. You can also try to use tuxedo urchins, in place of larger snails, as they don't get large, and keep very short spines - so they won't pose your rocks or corals any threat. I am a huge fan of urchins, for actual leafy algae clean-up. Just avoid larger ones with longer spines.

No snail that I'm aware of will munch bryopsis, though - all I can suggest to try to deprive it is to get rid of the phosphates, and focus on maintaining a high magnesium level. This will actually help choke it out, along with many other algaes that may be in your system.

[Viet-tin]

ok they were astrea size. they were the biggest snails in the tank. I also lied about all params being in check my nitrates are also showing. I was wondering if they were starving and thats why they died cause I never seen any of them eat any of the hair algae. I should also mention I have a pair of sea horses so heavy feeding is contributing to the higher phosphates and why i havent added an urchin already. I recently started to bring my mag levels up from 1200

[Timfish]

. . . You can also try to use tuxedo urchins . . .

+1, I also like Atlantic Green Urchins which are about the same size and short spined. I've never kept seahorses but I don't think (knock on wood) you'd have a problem with short spine urchins and seahorses. Besides the long spined urchins I'd avoid the pencil urchins, I had one crush a Gramma once that tried to hide in it's spines when moving a tank (I wouldn't worry about that combination normally) and I'd worry about a seahorse grabing it. It also sounds like you have a lot of snails in your tank so you might be right about them not getting enough food.

[mFrame]

Keep in mind that if you're not providing various sizes of empty shells for your hermits then they will evict your snails to take the larger shells. Hermits grow and swap shells frequently and snails don't do a good job of fighting back to defend their homes

[Viet-tin]

Im thinking they were starving. All the hermits are micro size and the trochus snails are 10X bigger than they are. Ill have to try one out. Itll be on my list of donts I have going with the horses.