Astrea Snail Babies in Tank

[Starfishandseahorse]

Hiya! I have a bunch of Astrea snails in my tank and they appear to have recently had a ton of babies (laid a bunch of eggs?- whatever it is snails produce). They are all over the back of my tank, and to be honest I'm pretty stoked about it as I REALLY need more clean up crew. My 200 gallon tank is only about 3 months old so far and I have barely any stock in it. Even still, its algae city as I got most of my water in the first few months straight from the ocean. I have all different kinds of algae growing all over the place in my tank- which is cool but I really need a bigger clean up crew for it. Right now I have 3 emerald crabs, a handful of dwarf hermits and 8 Astrea snails. That's it..... :/

I'm glad my snails have had some babies, but I'm wondering if they will actually make it. Do saltwater snail babies tend to make it all the wat to maturity or are they generally eaten off first? Right now besides my paltry clean up crew and a few corals I have a Tuxedo Urchin, 2 Fire Shrimp, 2 Scarlet Skunk Cleaner Shrimp, 3 Peppermint Shrimp and 3 Firefish. None of them seem to be interested in the snail babies, so I'm wondering what my chances are of them actually becoming adult snails. I've never had any success in my past tanks with anything's babies actually making it (fish fry, shrimp eggs, etc.).

So, my question is, will the snail babies make it? Or should I go ahead and buy some more adult snails that I really could use.... They've definitely gotten much bigger in the past couple of weeks so I'm pretty sure they are still alive. Some are even starting to change from flat spirals to actual little teeeeeeeny tiny snail shell guys.

Thanks guys! Hope everyone is doing well and hanging in there!

 

[Subsea]

Welcome to the addiction. I envy you near the ocean. I have made many collection trips to marshes & Gulf Coast rock jetties at Galveston & Corpus Christi.

In addittion to buying more snails, pods would be a good compliment to your clean up crew.

 

[SMSREEF]

My astrea snails never had babies. But my trochus do, and a bunch survived for me. Some are now dime sized and there are new groups of different sizes from a 1/4” and up.

 

[KyleNachoFriend]

Howdy! My Astrea snails have made thousands of babies over the past 6 months, and while they do not seem to get predated on (definitely won’t with your stock list), they do seem to grow extremely slowly. But I still have hundreds of various sizes after the last 3 months. Including a pic from my experiment tank for reference. Hope yours made it!

 

[KyleNachoFriend]

Probably have close to 150-200 just in this 10g