Cerith Snails are a valued member of your reefs clean up crew. They are fantastic detritus eaters and will help turn your sand bed over, ensuring it is oxygenated properly.
They are fantastic scavengers, and will spend their day chowing down on a variety of diatoms, cyanobacteria, film algae, detritus, and hair algae throughout the tanks found in Aquariums.
Cerith Snails posses the ability to be able to put themselves right after a fall from your glass or rocks, an ability that is not always found in other marine snails. This ability means you won’t have to keep putting them right manually, saving you from putting your hands in the tank for no other reason than to put right your snails.
They do best in larger, well established aquariums as they are voracious eaters. They are most often active at night, and will often lay eggs on your aquarium glass. It is unlikely any of the eggs will develop into snails as they take a considerable amount of time to develop, which results in most being eaten by other tank mates or being sucked into your filtartion system.
Like other snails, they will not tolerate high nitrates or copper based treatments.
Tank Requirements
- These snails are reef safe
- Clean and stable water
- Stable magnesium & calcium levels
- Detritus from an established aquarium
- They will not tolerate a high nitrate level
- Recommended stocking level is 1 – 3 snails per 20 gallons (90L) of water.
Feeding
They are able to eat a considerable amount of diatoms, cyanobacteria, film algae, detritus, and hair algae throughout the tanks found in Aquariums.
- These are predominantly scavengers
- They will eat left over foods
- They will eat fish waste (but they produce their own waste!)
Acclimatisation
These snails take quite a long time to acclimate. They should be drip acclimatised slowly, for roughly double the amount of time you would do for a fish, about an hour and a half.
When placing it in the tank, it is best to place it on sturdy rock work rather than the sand as they prefer to be on the rock work.
Snails do not acclimate particularly well, so if after a couple of days you notice your snail is not moving you should place it somewhere that you can keep an eye on it, and if after another couple of days it still hasn’t moved, you should consider removing it from the tank.
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