The Strawberry Conch, also known as the Tiger Conch, Concho and Strawberry Concho is a welcome addition to your reef’s clean up crew (CUC).
They will spend their time sifting through your sand bed looking for any algae, detritus and left over foods. They provide a valuable service by turning over your sand bed as they move around, keeping it aerated.
These unusual looking snails are interesting to watch with their lurching movements and googley eyes, they are great characters to add to your aquarium. When you search the online forums for Strawberry Conch, the most common descriptions of their behaviour will be strange, weird and odd.
Caution should be taken when adding them to an aquarium with overly aggressive tank mates, and hermit crabs that may prey on them for their shells.
They do best in established aquariums, but can additional foods added in newer aquariums will support them.
Tank Requirements
- These snails are reef safe.
- Clean and stable water.
- Stable magnesium & calcium levels.
- A reasonably deep sand bed to allow them to sift through for food.
- They will not tolerate a high nitrate level
- Recommended stocking level is 1 – 2 snails per 40 gallons (150L) of water.
- Caution should be taken when adding these snails with hermit crabs as the hermits do seem to like the shells and will eat the snails for their shells.
Feeding
If your tank is not very established, you can still have a conch snail, but you will need to ensure you supplement its food with algae wafers and sea weed until you have a decent algae base.
- These are omnivores
- Detritus, algae, diatoms
- Leftover meaty foods
- Unfortunate deceased livestock
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 sand work rather than the rocks as they prefer to bury themselves in the substrate.
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.
Personal Review
I have to say, I am in love with the strawberry conch. Since being in my aquarium I can honestly say he has made a difference to the algae that is in the lower portion of the tank. As you can see from my video, he is also very good at cleaning the bottom of my glass that I don’t like to get too near to with my glass cleaner.
I had never really had them on my radar until he came as part of a clean up crew pack from Cellar Marine, I am so pleased he was part of it!
I think every tank should have a Conch Snail!
