Bumblebee snail problem?

[JayM]

I've got 8 or 10 bumblebee snails as part of my CUC and have noticed that a couple of them are nestled in on an island of firework clove polyps. They've been there a few days with no visible negative effects to the polyps. I also noticed one sitting on top of a small clump of Rasta Zoas last night (I plucked it off - just in case).

Are they doing their job at cleaning up, or are they attempting to murder my corals? I can't seem to find any solid info one way or the other.

 

[williamCreery]

I’ll give you the good news. They don’t eat coral.

They don’t serve not even the slightest bit in your reef tank, but only eat the benefits on the sand. They don’t eat algae or hair algae, Or serve as much purpose as all the other snail options there were.

 

[williamCreery]

My best advice would to be to remove as many as you can.

Throw in about 4 Nassarius snails, they do a 5x better job stirring up the sand and eating the benefits of the sand.
10 Trochus snails
10 Zebra snails.
I 100% recommend you this to see a cleaner sand floor, rock work, and back glass, even Your display glass. I only scrape my glass once a month thanks to this guys

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I don't know if they are dead or hibernating at that point, but I've had corals grow right over them a few times.

I agree with williamcreery above, I don't think they are great clean up crew, and they seem to die out (in my tanks) fairly quickly.

 

[Cell]

I’ll give you the good news. They don’t eat coral.

They don’t serve not even the slightest bit in your reef tank, but only eat the benefits on the sand. They don’t eat algae or hair algae, Or serve as much purpose as all the other snail options there were.

They are carnivorous scavengers and have been known to eat vermetid snails.

 

[JayM]

The bumbleebees were added in the hope that they'd wipe out a small vermetid snail outbreak, so I guess not technically really CUC. I didn't want to chance them not being effective so I just pulled the one rock with the pest snails out. The bumblebees may or may not be helping with keeping the vermetid snails out of my sight at this point.

I do have a pretty diverse CUC. I have an assortment of about 2 dozen trochus, nassarius, nerite and cerith snails as well as 3 fighting conch and 6 or 8 red legged hermits.

Sounds like I'll just let the bees roam wherever they like so long as nothing seems to be bothered by them, though I'm not sure they'll survive my Tiger shrimp should they wander to his side of the tank. I caught him trying to drag a trochus 3x his size into his lair the other day. Only reason he wasn't able to was the hole was too small for the snail to fit.

 

[williamCreery]

The bumbleebees were added in the hope that they'd wipe out a small vermetid snail outbreak, so I guess not technically really CUC. I didn't want to chance them not being effective so I just pulled the one rock with the pest snails out. The bumblebees may or may not be helping with keeping the vermetid snails out of my sight at this point.

I do have a pretty diverse CUC. I have an assortment of about 2 dozen trochus, nassarius, nerite and cerith snails as well as 3 fighting conch and 6 or 8 red legged hermits.

Sounds like I'll just let the bees roam wherever they like so long as nothing seems to be bothered by them, though I'm not sure they'll survive my Tiger shrimp should they wander to his side of the tank. I caught him trying to drag a trochus 3x his size into his lair the other day. Only reason he wasn't able to was the hole was too small for the snail to fit.

If you find Your snails dying off, your hermit crabs are responsible.
I removed mine since all they do is eat my dang snails and having to restock every 5 months with snails. Money pit.
I also thought they died by water quality…. Nope they were the hermits.

 

[Blopple]

The bumbleebees were added in the hope that they'd wipe out a small vermetid snail outbreak, so I guess not technically really CUC. I didn't want to chance them not being effective so I just pulled the one rock with the pest snails out. The bumblebees may or may not be helping with keeping the vermetid snails out of my sight at this point.

I do have a pretty diverse CUC. I have an assortment of about 2 dozen trochus, nassarius, nerite and cerith snails as well as 3 fighting conch and 6 or 8 red legged hermits.

Sounds like I'll just let the bees roam wherever they like so long as nothing seems to be bothered by them, though I'm not sure they'll survive my Tiger shrimp should they wander to his side of the tank. I caught him trying to drag a trochus 3x his size into his lair the other day. Only reason he wasn't able to was the hole was too small for the snail to fit.

How well did they work for the vermetids? Literally just today I noticed and nuked 5 of them with superglue, so surely there are more. Unfortunately they are not isolated to a single rock. Would like to get ahead of the problem and was considering adding one or two bumblebees.

 

[JayM]

How well did they work for the vermetids? Literally just today I noticed and nuked 5 of them with superglue, so surely there are more. Unfortunately they are not isolated to a single rock. Would like to get ahead of the problem and was considering adding one or two bumblebees.

No idea. They were only on a single rock, and I decided just yank it out of the tank rather than wait to see if the bumblebees would actually eat them.