Clean up crew/snails

[bamzam]

Hello,

Im new to saltwater. I started stocking up my 12 gallon recently and when it came to a CUC I asked around for some recommendations. I ended up with 5 nassarius snails and a cleaner shrimp. Later I was googling and didn't realize the nassarius snails do not eat algae. I'm making a conscious effort not to overfeed so my clowns are gobbling up pretty much all the food I provide...the very little that gets away, the cleaner shrimp gets to pretty quickly. Should I get rid of my nassarius snails since it doesn't seem like they'd have much to eat? If so, any recommendation on snails to replace them with that will help keep my tank clean of algae? I always read about turbo snails online but I saw one at the LFS and it seemed a little too big for my tank? Thanks in advance!

[BrAin]

Ive had my saltwater tank for some time and I still cant remember what each type of snail does. I would look on you tube for the Bulk Reef Supply 52 week video series on the 160 gallon tank. One of the weeks has some great information on CUC's. The good thing about the series is he is pretty straight forward and not trying to sell you a product for the most part. You might be starving those little guys as this is a new tank.

[ogarcia_1993]

When new to saltwater it's always best to start with a 55 gallon or greater tank
Easier tank to keep stable parameters.
With a tank that small, it's best to have an auto top off to keep the salinity stable or it's going to fluctuate up and down very fast since you don't have a huge volume of water to work with.
I started down the same road as you with a small tank and now I wish I would've started with a bigger tank in the first place because There is more room for error since you are still learning. A small tank can easily crash on you if you don't keep on an eye on it all the time


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[imhill]

I love my cerith snails. I too made an uninformed decision when buying a cuc for my first tank, and bought 3 nassaurius and 2 cerith snails. (Also a scarlet reef crab) As I had only a tiny little bit of algae, I quickly starved one of my ceriths to death, but stubbornly atributed it to "new-tank-shock" and "illnesses". The dead snail was then eaten by the nassaurius snails and the crab. Since I didn't know how much to feed the crab, I just put a bunch of food in and let it get blown around. The nassaurius snails ate all the left overs. In hindsight, I should have just gotten ceriths, but oh well.
Ian
(By the way, I started with a 10 gallon nano) <---BAD IDEA