Well, given I just did a presentation on this for Austin Club here it goes (and know that my philosophy is start with low numbers and add if need be. Most dump in the old 1 per gallon and wonder why they have 50 empty shells in a month. Some snails live for 100 years in wild!

Also, if your hermits are eating your snails it is probably because they are starving.

Snails all eat and specialize in different things.

If you are going barebottom (ugghhh), then you can't keep ceriths and nassarius. They require a sand bed to thrive and survive long term.

Nerites eat diatoms, filamentous algae, and cyanobacteria. Not all species are marine and many live at tide line and crawl out of water waiting for tide to come back. Don't buy any you see in the store that have already crawled out of water. They will die.

Ceriths eat red hair algae, cyanobacteria, film algae, diatom (will not eat filamentous algae). Also scavengers on detritus and fish waste.

Nassarius eat dead, organic matter and are scavengers and they DO NOT eat algae. Great for eating fish poo, leftover food, etc. You can tell this because when you feed they pop out of the sand!

Trochus species eat diatoms and filamentous algae (doesn’t eat macroalgae).

Turbo species eat diatoms and filamentous algae (doesn’t eat macroalgae).

Margarita snails will not live at temperatures above 78 degrees and usually won't last long in our tropical tanks as they are a temperate species.

Bumblebee snails are actually in the whelk family and DO NOT eat algae, they will decimate your sand bed macrofauna.

I would start out with a few of each of the good and then add more as needed. I keep gobs of hermits of different species and RARELY have seen them kill a live snail. On the rare occasion they do, it tends to be cerith snails as they seem to prefer their shells.

I suspect if you stock your hermits lightly, they won't bother your snails.

Lee



Turbos & Trochus species - diatom