Warm salt water snails

[jonfr]

What types of warm salt waters snails exist ? I have high interest in setting up a salt water tank, both cold salt (5 - 13C) water and warm salt water tank (20 - 28C).

But I do not know what type of salt water snails exist. I do know few local cold water snails, but nothing more.

[Annie Anderson]

If you go to http://www.DrsFosterSmith.com they sell saltwater snails. Maybe if you could get the names of them, you could look them up and see where you could buy some.

[Pollux]

i think those 'turbo snails' like warm water. thise photos you showed us of your native cold water snails were stunning.

[jonfr]

You should see them over the summer, they have a lot of colors, Red, yellow, green, purple, strips of all types and shapes and more.

[Pollux]

i will look foward to photos then will you have it set up

[jonfr]

It is going to be interesting, but I have a lot of details to work out on setting up salt water tank before I do this. I also might not have the money do set this up this summer, but I will figure it out soon enough.

[rpilla001]

Keep away from cone snails or olive snails. Both are carniverous and will kill and eat your fish. The cone snail is deadly to humans if you are stung with their harpoons.

I made the mistake of puting a live olive snail in my tank. It ate all my fish in less than a week.

[Donya]

Tropical marine snails are generally the most abundant in the marine pet trade because coldwater tanks require extra equipment in most cases. However, even tropical marine snails tend to have an upper limit temperature-wise. Some Turbo species don't like it much over 22C, while others do ok up to 26C. 28C is probably too high for most snails, so if you shoot for 24C as a stable temperature you'll probably have success with most tropical marine snails.

Some good, hardy tropical snails are: Turbo fluctuosa, Ceriths, marine Nerites, Trochus, and Nassarius if you have a sand bed. All of those need a long acclimation by drip-line, and Turbos need extra food if there isn't a lot of algae (plus they're just fun to hand-feed ). Ceriths may dig into the substrate and only be seen once in a blue moon, but they are good janitors.

Two other things to add to the list of non-recommended starter gastropods:

- tulip snails/horse conches. They're completely predatory, preferring other snails as their diet, and not all sellers make that clear. I'm not sure which species are covered by those common names unfortunately.

- bumblebee snails. These also eat other snails.

- coweries. I wouldn't call them harmful, but their diets seem very poorly documented and even completely incorrectly documented. An example: Dr. Fosters & Smith lists tiger cowries (Cypraea tigris) as carnivores, while all my books list the species as a pure herbivore. From what I have seen, they are opportunistic eaters of anything.

[Pollux]

do you know what your native snails eat jonfr?

[jonfr]

do you know what your native snails eat jonfr?

I got one species that only eats algae and yet another that appears to also to eat algae, but there might be something else on that menu without me knowing it. I also know about one predator snail, according to the info on him he mostly eats blue mussels, but I must assume that every type of meat is a go for him.