Help hundreds of snails

[reb]

I have a 28 gal nano reef tank with a few fish and a lot of corals mainly softies and lps. About a week ago I noticed a few little snails about the size of half of an eraser on the end of a pencil. Last night about an hour after the lights went out and only the blue lights were on I noticed about 300+ of these snails all over the aquarium. Mainly on the rock. How did I get so many so quick and are they good or bad to have?

 

[flower]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Reb http:///t/392361/help-hundreds-of-snails#post_3483280
I have a 28 gal nano reef tank with a few fish and a lot of corals mainly softies and lps. About a week ago I noticed a few little snails about the size of half of an eraser on the end of a pencil. Last night about an hour after the lights went out and only the blue lights were on I noticed about 300+ of these snails all over the aquarium. Mainly on the rock. How did I get so many so quick and are they good or bad to have?
Are they red looking in color? If you are cetain they are snails and white color, they are fine. They are in the live rock and come out at night and clean the tank. If they are a redish colored snail they are flat worms and they are a problem.

 

[jerth6932]

You got a picture of them?

 

[saxman]

If the snails look like "baby" turbos, they are most likely Collonista sp., which are excellent little hitchhikers to have. They tend to wax and wane as the food source in your tank varies.
Check out http://www.lionfishlair.com/hitchhiker/hitchhiker.shtml to see if your critter is there.

 

[reb]

They do kind of remind me of baby turbo snails. They are very small, whiteish in color with some tan or brown on the shells. I would see a few here and there, but about an hour after the white lights go out I see hundreds of them mainly on the rock, a few on the glass, and a few in the sand. When I wake in the morning I can only see a few.

 

[reb]

How many is too many to still be good for the tank?

 

[saxman]

They'll die back to whatever population the tank supports, generally speaking. If you have other tanks, or friends looking for some diversity, take a half dozen of these snails and seed the other tanks.
We have populations that we do this with in our own setups (we've had as many as 14 FO setups running)...one tank has a "crop", so we pass them to other tanks that can use them.