best snail for algae on glass?

whats the best snail for cleaning algae on the glass? I'm helping my neighbor put together a tank for him and his son and want to make it as trouble free as possible. I understand nerites are supposed to be good, but they also leave the tank. are there any other good ones that won't leave the tank and won't just die if they land upside down?

 

Hello and Welcome.

I like the Turbo snails and Margarita snails.

 

they are good algae glass cleaners? and they won't knock everything over? I haven't had a saltwater tank in 10 years, but i remember when I did, either the snails tried to get out, or they would barrel over things and knock them over.

 

Astrea Tecta - as very good on glass IME
They are not normally as large as Turbos so they have a better power to weight ratio
and dont fall over when attempting complicated transitions from 1 rock to another rock

Steve

 

nerites will eventually, IME, stop leaving the tank. Even when they do, you just have to drop them back in... not a big deal.

I recommend dwarf cerfiths. A lot of dwarf ceriths. Like 4 per gallon. They are super cheap though.


My best recommendation would be to go over to ReefCleaners.org | Clean Up Crews and Macro Algae - Home and fill out their form and see what he suggests. I would follow his recommendation to a T - even if you choose to spend more money and buy them elsewhere

good luck

 

funny you should say that, i filled that out right before I read this. ceriths will clean the algae off the glass and right themselves?

problem with nerites is, the wife is not going to go for them coming out of the tank and I'm concerned(maybe unfounded) they will get into the overflow and cause their house to flood.

 

I had a turbo, really BIG, if you turned all the pumps off, you could actually hear him scrape algae from the glass. Unfortunantly he was a bulldozer and knocked all my corals around. I reccomend a mixture of bumblebee snails, cerith snails, a brittle star for detritus, and maybe a emerald crab for the small amounts of hair and bubble algae that inevitably come with good live rock! This is the system I use for my 10 gallon, only problem I've ever faced with the current cleanup crew was my hermits would sometimes " evict" a snail for it's home, but after adding some spare shells to my tank the problem subsided, hope this was helpful and not just a long read!!