February 22, 2009
The Importance of Snails for The Aquarium
A useful addition to just about any aquarium is the Astrea snail. They are relatively small, don't take up too much space, and are the perfect janitors.
Buying Astrea snails, for your aquarium, ensures that the algae in your tank is kept to manageable levels. Astrea snails are herbivores and they love algae and feed off of it continuously. Over the course of a year, this saves you countless hours of cleaning your tank. In fact, this is one of the main reasons that many aquarium owners buy them. Astrea snails are also good burrowers and their activities of digging through the sand at the bottom of the tank help to aerate it.
But, in addition to their purely functional qualities, these snails also add a decorative element to your tank as they are shaped like a cone covered with circular rings. Their colors range from a light tan to a slightly greenish color.
Astrea snails do tend to be shy. In fact they are mainly nocturnal and often do most or their foraging and eating at night. So if you buy one or two for your tank, make sure to provide them with hiding places where they can disappear to when not eating and exploring.
Probably the most popular snail in the U.S. is the Florida Turbo. As long as you keep your tank with enough calcium in it's water, their shell will grow continuously. So if they have a long life, they can become relatively large. Similar to turtles, the shell acts as their protection. They are soft bodied and without the hard shell would be easy prey for a predator. With the shell, however, few fish predator are much of a risk to them.
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