The Reef Tank banner

red foot snail?

18969 Views 11 Replies 8 Participants Last post by  Cookie_Monster
I bought 4 of these today and have them in my reef tank. Good?....Bad?.....cant seem to find much info on the net. Can you help me?
1 - 12 of 12 Posts
They appear to be good snails, but picky about temperature... though the only thing I've read is the Dr Foster Smith write up.

"The Red Foot Moon Snail, also known as the Red collar snail, is found in holes and crevices of the shoreline consuming algae. This snail require cooler temperatures of no more than 74 degrees in the home aquarium.

It will do well in an aquarium if provided with ample places to hide and large amounts of room in which to graze, preferably with live rock. The Red Foot Snail also grazes algae on the glass and is useful in keeping the algae under control in aquariums. Since these snail uses calcium to build its shell, adequate calcium levels must be maintained in the home aquarium. It is very sensitive to high levels of copper- based medications and prefers a low nitrate level."

link
See less See more
They eat inverts.

here's a link

http://www.woodbridge.tased.edu.au/mdc/Species Register/sea_snails.htm

scroll down until you see the red foot snails.

HTH
The "red foot" snails I had looked nothing like that pic, they looked cool but didn't live very long before they keeled over, if the drs. can be trusted then it was higher temperatures that killed them.
"Red foot" only describes a couple hundred species of snails. Who knows what you have....
I have seen a "Red Footed" Conch for sale. Looked like a fighting conch with a red/orange underbelly.

Ray
That sounds like a horse conch.
I have 4 red skirt snails in my tank and man are they big (almost golfball size) but they definately have taken care of my algae problem. I got them inadvertantly, one of the guys at the lps apparently thought these were margarita snails and I didnt check the bag till I got home. Kinda wondering if they'll get much bigger, hope not since its only a 20 gal. Anyhow my tank is constantly between 78-80 and it hasnt bothered them one bit. Infact these guys are nuts, atleast once a week now one or two will go missing and I'll find them in either my hang-on protein skimmer or my hang-on filter.
I bought a "red-foot " snail at my lfs also. Stayed mostly on the glass, but would make an occasional foray into the live rock, where he'd plow over frags and bug zoanthids, so I relegated him to my refugium, which consistently stays cooler than my main tank. He lasted 3 months there. One day he appeared to be fine, munching on algae on the glass, the next he was shriveled on the bottom, in his death throes.
I guess the arrowhead crab wasn't friendly enough for him! Funny you should say that because he died about two days after I removed most of the hermits and put them back into the main tank. I guess he wanted to go too. Maybe he was playing 'possum, like Nemo (you can see the tv from the refugium, and we did watch it). If that was the case, he was sorely disappointed when I pulled him from the tank and set him on the back porch and the fireants ate the body.
1 - 12 of 12 Posts
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top