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What Are These Things?


Meteorflower

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Hi all,

So I've had a problem keeping snails alive in my reef tank... despite having tons of algae, it seems like one by one my snails all inevitably die off. Right now I'm down to just two hardy turbos.

Last week I was in Aquatek and saw some great looking Nassarius snails (big and active), so I brought home four. Today when I went to feed the tank I saw that one of them was lying upside down and very still, and he was crawling with these little unknown gastropods. I removed them with a turkey baster and put them in a bowl for identification. I noticed when I did this that the Nassarius started moving a bit, so he wasn't dead yet. My question is, what are these little things, and could they be killing my snails? They are very small, with tan and white striped shells and a small proboscis similar to the Nassarius. Total shell length is less than a centimeter (the last pic has grains of sand in it for comparison).

Sure hope someone know what these are... because I have no clue!

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depending on your invert count, you could remove your inverts to a QT, and then dose iodine in the DT. I would make note of any live stock you may have that is sensitive to iodine levels, and QT them as well. OR, you could use the old bottle trap method with a few dead snails inside it as bait. Amount of iodine dosing varies on gallonage.

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If you remove all your snails you might be able to starve them out. Kind of like the treatment for Ick. Just don't give them anything to eat and they eventually starve out. Of course they will probably turn to something else, like your coral so this may not be the best plan.

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If they're olive snails and not babylonia's you probably wont be able to easily starve them out. Olive snails consume microfauna, which is essentially any critter in your substrate. I would experiment to find different foods that they are attracted to and vigilantly remove or smash them as soon as you see them. I was able to get pond snails out of freshwater tanks this way, but it often takes weeks or months to get them all out.

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