WARNING! This is not a professional website! I am NOT an expert. Do NOT believe everything on this site.

My Reef Snails
Reef Snail Photos

I wish I had time to write about the various species and types of reef snails. Instead, I will just tell you about mine.

I have a larger page on freshwater snails unrelated to these guys here.

I first got seven snails on 5/3/08 who all died instantly. See this page for their story. I tried again on 5/21/08 with seven more snails from another source. They all died too! See that same page for their story in detail.

Finally, on 6/5/08, I got five snails who did survive. I copied this section from my reef blog page three about them.

I went to a different store and got one huge cerith snail, two margaritas, and two nassarius snails. Unlike the last two batches of snails, these guys were very active in the bag. I went back to work with them and brought them inside (120 degrees F in the car!). That store guy said all he ever does is float and dump, and I should do that! I decided not to. I floated for about 30 min while doing other animal/fish chores, then drip acclimated for an hour, then re-floated in ziploc bags for 20 minutes. This time, I checked the salinity, pH, and temperature of the snails' water versus tank water. When I started, my tank pH was 8.02 but the water in the bags was pH 7.93 in one and pH 7.90 in the other! So much for store water being the perfect 8.2! It was too low! The salinity in my tank was 1.024. The two bags of snails were 1.026 and 1.0245. One was pretty high! After drip acclimation, the snails were at pH 7.96. I had to do a water change to allow for the drip so I made 2.5 gallons of new saltwater at a pH of 8.16 and 1.024 SG. I lifted the snails out in to the tank. They moved right away! For the first time, I had moving snails in my tank! The margaritas and huge cerith are very slow. The nassarius, or one of them anyway, thinks he is speed racer! His foot is four times the surface area of his shell. I had no idea they were that fast! He has been in the sand with snorkel up, sliding down the glass like an amusement ride, and driving around. So, I think my previous snails died from acclimation problems (changes) and not from the tank itself.

On 6/16/08, I got five more snails. I got another cerith snail and another margarita snail. I also got three astraea snails. Those three have finally really been working on the sheets of algae in my tank! I hope it grows at a rate to keep both the snails and I happy! This time, there was no problem acclimating them.

A small snail showed up in my tank that I did not buy. I first saw him on 6/19/08. It must have come with the corals. Around 6/24/08, I saw my "free" snail again. Since he was reachable, and I was worried that he too might be "bad," I decided to pick him out and put him in the three gallon tank which could use a few tiny snails anyway. Well, I grabbed the snail, and it fell in to two parts! Huh? The front end fell to the sand and drove away while the rear stayed on the glass (I removed that). I later looked on-line. It seems that the species Stomatella varia will drop its rear when attacked by predators (like me). They are good to have (the "best algae eater you can't buy" the site said) so I will not bother him again. I later got a photo you can see below.

On 7/6/08, I got two margarita snails for the 3 gallon Eclipse tank. They spent a few weeks clinging to each other and were dead by late July. I do not know why.

The larger cerith snail died sometime in early July; it just stopped moving.

On 8/12/08, I got two nassarius snails for my new 6 gallon nano cube tank. There is a deep sand bed in which they can wander. They are a bit larger than I would like, larger than the two in my 12 gallon tank.

On 9/27/08, four new astraea snails arrived for the 6 gallon tank. I only ordered two but they sent two extra! Luckily, they are not too big so hopefully it is not too many snails for the tank which also has those two nassarius snails. The astraea snails stayed on the top of the live rock where I put them for a few days before driving out further. They are pretty slow!

For about three weeks, there was one margarita snail in the 12 gallon tank who kept landing on its back. I would right it twice a day until, around 11/6/08, it finally died. I have no idea why; none of the other animals were bothering it.

Photos are listed from oldest to newest. There are photos of my reef on my reef photos page. Some of those photos also show the snails. I did not include all of those here on this page.

This photo from 5/25/08 just shows one of the piles of dead snails. The one at the bottom left is the one that came back to life after three days and then died again.
Dead snails

These photos were taken on 6/7/08, two days after I got the first five living snails.
Nassarius snail - see the macroalgae on the right too.
Nassarius snail - close-up (actually from a separate photo of the same snail as above a minute later).
Margarita snail - one of them.
Margarita snail - the other one.

This photo of the huge cerith snail on the back wall of the tank is from 6/13/08:
Cerith snail

I took this photo on 6/16/08 of one of my new Astraea snails:
Astraea snail

This poor photo from 8/2/08 shows the Stomatella snail that hitchhiked in to the tank. Its head is on the right. It is really growing!
Stomatella snail

On 9/27/08, I got four new Astraea snails. Here they are in the container I used to acclimate them:
Astraea snails

There are two margarita snails in this photo from 3/2/09. Can you find them?
Snails

On 10/27/09, I got a Live Aquaria order. Instead of getting the yellow dwarf feather duster that I ordered, they sent seven banded trochus snails! My 6 and 12 gallon tanks are full in general and certainly over full with snails so I had my father take them to Petco and give them away to an employee there. I later researched them and found they would have been ideal snails for a reef tank, if I had had the room!
Banded trochus snails