is my snail eating my coraline algae??!!

[brighteyes_cm]

my husband and i have recently set up our tank and to battle our diatom bloom he picked up a snail... it was doing a great job on the sand and glass, and all was fine untill it hit the LR...
where once we had purple, red and green coraline algae now only white spots remain! is this normal behavior for a snail? are there any that wont gobble up all the beautiful color in our tank?

one other question... about how long will the diatom bloom last, we were planning on picking up some more snails and such but are not sure of how many we require to keep our tank under control.

[thefatman]

i dont know if they eat corraline.

what type of snail did you get?
how old is the tank?
what size is the tank?

answers to that will help answer the question of how long the bloom will last, as well as how many snails you'll require.

same with the snail type you currently have. different snails eat different types of algae.

WELCOME TO TRT

[underwaterreefer]

this is brighteyes hubby, the snail is a light grey/off white pointy thing. the tank is a 50 gal with 70 lb of lr, its 3 weeks old

[thefatman]

welcome to trt to you as well another h/w team!!! btw, i have some friends in victoria! and my closest friend lives in Nanaimo.

anyway, soudns liek yo ugot an astrea, probably ran around a buck or two?

astrea : http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/p...=23&pCatId=563

they are known to eat cyano and diatoms, i've never heard of them eating corraline, but that's not to say they dont.

as for the bloom, yeah your tank is still brand spanking new, relatively speaking. the diatoms will eventually deplete the nutirents they are living on, and will also be gobbled up by the new green algae that will replace them

then the green will eventually be replaced by corraline.

there are several thigns that can feed diatoms, but the msot talked about is silicates in the water.

where are you getting your water from? tap water, conditioned, ro/di water etc...

be patient, it will go away with time, but there is no set time line, could be a week, could be month.

you havent added fish or corals yet right?

[Casey]

Welcome to TRT nice to have you

[underwaterreefer]

thats the snail, but try $5, the lfs around here all got together and decided to get rich off the general public

thanks for the welcome

[underwaterreefer]

$6.99 and $8.99 for a blue legged hermit

[uurt]

WELCOME!!! To the both of you. Test your water parameters and let all here know what they ae before you add anything else. I don't think that the snail will eat the coralline. As for the cyano, I put more LR in my tank, and upgraded my lights. I now am getting a slight bloom. My tank has been cycled over a year.
Small changes can do that in established tanks, they will have a mini cycle.
Just wait it out.

MHO.
Again welcome to TRT.

Lee

[thefatman]

yikes!!! well, but that IS canadian dollars

i hate to say this, but i pay a buck a piece for my astreas (which was good, considering 19/20 died within two weeks )

i hope that's one HUGE hermit!! i paid a buck for those too. but they are really really small. shells are less than 1/2" long.

it really burns me when i see lfs's that charge an arm and a leg for stuff. we have someone else here in new mexico, and his lfs was charging 11.99 a pound for live rock

[brighteyes_cm]

were initially were using treated tap water, but have since switched to RO water. The ammonia and nitrite levels have been and are currently undetectable, our nitrate levels are around 12 - 25 mg/L (thus our diatom bloom)

Our LR was cured for 3 weeks and has nice patches of small zoos sprouting up daily.

we currently have 2 chromis, 2 small ocellaris clowns, 1 zebra hermit, 1 very odd emerald crab, and our snail.
we decided to wait at least 6 months before adding more fish to our tank just to let it mature a little more. and corals are not even a consideration untill we upgrade our lighting and get a little more experience

[underwaterreefer]

just a reply to the $11.99 lr, one store around here charges $14.99 /lb!

but i guess that is monopoly money(cnd)

[busboy]

Unfortunately the white spots you are seeing is actually dead coraline. I had the same problem several years ago when I first started out, I put too much of a bioload on a still cycling tank. You have a pretty heavy load on such a young tank but hey we've all done it! Its hard with a new tank not to rush into adding fish and corals but patience is definately the key here. I would do a search on "coraline algae" using the search feature on the boards and see what others have done in the past to combat the problem. Good luck Mike

[tdwyatt]

Originally posted by brighteyes_cm
my husband ... ... picked up a snail... it was doing a great job on the sand and glass, and all was fine untill it hit the LR... ...Where once we had purple, red and green coralline algae now only white spots remain! Is this normal behavior for a snail? Are there any that wont gobble up all the beautiful color in our tank?

Not to worry, the snails that are sold through the aquarium trade are not capable of consuming the calcareous coralline algae. HOWEVER, if you have new live rock, look for some small urchins that may have come with the rock. They are quite capable of removing coralline algae, although this is usually not a problem, as they preferentially clean the green microalgal growths off the rock which will allow the coralline algae to develop, as well as distributing some of the algal particles from their messy eating to spread your coralline.

These Echinoderms have a specialized group of teeth in an apparatus called Aristotle's Lantern that grinds these tough algae off the rock. Some spp. are capable of boring through the rock as well. Keep your alkalinity and calcium up with a good supplemental regimen, the coralline will develop based on your lighting and current conditions in the tank. Speciation of your coralline algae will occur and this will dictate what colors actually outcompete the other spp. in the tank. If the rock spent enough time out of the water, white patches of dead coralline will develop, but I would be willing to bet that you have an urchin in your rock. Look late at night after the lights go out with a flashlight.

Originally posted by brighteyes_cm
one other question... about how long will the diatom bloom last, we were planning on picking up some more snails and such but are not sure of how many we require to keep our tank under control.

Diatom blooms are driven by the amount of silicate and the availability of nitrogenous nutrients in the water column. These blooms usually don't last more than a few days, and will disappear after this initial bloom as other competitors for these same nutrients begin to increase their populations in your system. It would be best to limit the introduction of new silicates as you have already done by using RO/DI treated water, but keep in mind that the diatoms may still return until either some sponges or other silicate needy organism(s) uptake the available organosilicates and silicon dioxides in the water column for their own structures. Once the silicate level drops below a minimal level (at total depletion to undetectable levels in the ocean), diatoms will continue to reproduce and grow, and can completely deplete the water column of silicate even in the dark. The diatoms that form tests in this silicon-depleted environment will photosynthesize when illuminated again, but will quickly die within hours. The silicate formed by diatoms is completely insoluble while they are still alive, but once they do die, the tests become 100% soluble up to the solubility limit of silicon in seawater, the excess of which is sinked in the substrate. This may trigger another cycle in a closed system, but usually the cycle is broken once sponges and snails begin to uptake these excess silicates in the water column. To prevent this cycle in a closed system I would recommend that you siphon out the dusting of diatoms from your rock and substrate surfaces as they appear, as this will export the silicates out of your system.

Go ahead and add a few snails now, but add them just a few at a time (maybe 5 to 10 at a time if you have 75 gal us or up) until you find that they are feeding well and consuming the algal growths forming in the tank.

hth.

[thefatman]

see me, for proper snail acclimation though


tom, you are awesome. such detailed explanations! and with a headache to boot!!!

[karlas]

your corraline might be going through a stage when it starts growing its white and when a spot dies off its white also. thats what i might say it is