turbo snails pissing me off

I'm sorry for the delays.....my digital cam is a POS (not point-of-sale). I've burned through 1.5 sets of batteries trying to get a decent photo of anything in my aquarium, but it's always too dark, too bright, and mostly too blurry to get any reasonable detail out of.

Here's a sample of about the best I could get:


I'm going to remove the snails and put them in a container and shoot them (with the camera, not an M4 as tempted as I am)

 

not for sure but that doesn't look like the mexican turbos i have, at least not the shell anyway

 

well, from what I'm reading, there are at least several varieties of similar snails such as "zebra" which is what I'm thinking this is.....

many sites have a pic of a snail with the striped banding like mine, and large in size. The pic looks like mine, but they all say "yellow stripes" in the verbal description.

oh well. Oceanpro Aquatics, Inc.: Zebra Turbo Snail - Zebra Turbo

 

If the snail was eating the coraline, there wouldnt be a white strip behind them there would be bare rock. The white you are seeing is the coraline dieing. Have you checked your parameters? Did you have a lot of coraline in your tank before the rock? Coraline bleaching is usually one of the first signs that there is a problem with water chemistry.

 

Amen! ;D

 

ok, maybe I'm not saying this right. The base rock is Fiji (white semi-shiny crust covering it). like this:

Left side - original Fiji live rock
Center - purple coraline covered Fiji live rock


The center live rock was almost entirely purple, and has only turned white where I visually watched the snails path. The remainder of the rock is still purple where the snails haven't gone. I'm not entirely doubting you, but it makes no sense that the rest of the rock isn't turning white. My thoughts are that the purple rock originally had the same white crust covering it before the purple algae grew on it, and when the snails "cleaned" it off, they ate the surface purple algae leaving the original white coating beneath. Maybe I'm wrong and just don't get what you're trying to say.

What parameters would be out of whack if it was bleaching it white?

I've been using Purple-up daily per instructions, to add calcium and iodine, and my water test (all that I tested) were as follows:

pH 8.0
Nitrites 0
Nitrates 0
Ammonia 0
Calcium 400ppm

Don't give up on me yet, I'm just trying to understand it to where it makes sense to me.

 

How is your Mg and DKH???

 

I'll get you an answer on that today.

 

dKH is 12
and I don't have a test for Mg, but I'll find out.

 

hey all, i just got my 2 turbo snails today, you freaked me out when you started saying it will eat coraline. thats the complete opposite of what i was told by the aquarium.

hey do you think that 2 turbo snail is too many for a 2 foot tank/54 litre tank/15 gallon tank? im not sure how many i should have