How do I keep the snail shells from looking ugly?

[James_O]

It's natural and normal. It sometimes even looks better in my opinion. Besides, that one with the coralline algae will help spread it around the tank!

 

[James_O]

So if in the ocean there are other cuc to clean the shells off, is it possible to have them in aquaria?

Hermit crabs usually clean each other shells. They usually won't clean snails shells though, because they will be tempted to kill it for it's shell...

 

[Tamberav]

@Dan_P was not talking about you. He was talking about the authors original post.

He was saying that it’s more important to care for the well-being of animals than to care about their shells.

Sorry I misunderstood. I was really confused lol

 

[62518161]

 

[Hermie]

Easiest solution is change your perspective

 

[James_O]

It's natural and normal. It sometimes even looks better in my opinion. Besides, that one with the coralline algae will help spread it around the tank!

For example, this is one of my snails:

Algae, coralline, tube worms, etc. Looks beautiful to me!

I find that my hermits shells are cleaner, just because they will clean each other. Snails are not that generous.

 

[Karen00]

It goes without saying that most of our tanks don't have near the diversity the ocean does. It could be some snails have silent (and not obvious) cleaning partners. Maybe it's a fish, maybe it's an urchin, heck maybe it's copepods. Others might use the buildup of material for protective camouflage. It is absolutely correct (as others have stated) their shells will collect things like algae, etc. over time in our tanks. I have oysters in a brackish system and if I get a little lax in doing their tank they get a buildup of algae that I have to manually scrub off because I don't have cuc in that tank. So I would assume your cuc doesn't have it's own cuc. Do cleaner shrimp only clean fish?

 

[malacoda]

I don't think you can keep them looking like they do in the ocean ... at least not without regular intervention such as scrubbing with a toothbrush, etc.

For algae, one option is to put all the snails together in a basket that they can't get out of ... and keep it in your tank/sump for a couple of weeks. Without other, easier food to graze on, they'll eat the algae off each other's shells.

The ocean is pretty different from out tanks...

Less nutrients means much less algae growth on shells. Stronger currents constantly abrading the shells like mild sandpaper. In deep water or in reef crevices, much less light fueling the growth of coralline on their shells. Etc, etc.

If the LFS didn't have constant turn-around in their stock of snails, their shells would look the same as yours.

 

[davidcalgary29]

I'm just waiting for OP to discover urchins and their habit of hoarding/decorating with nuisance algae and random bits of plastic I swear I bolted onto the tank.

 

[snorklr]

just glue zoas on them

 

[A Young Reefer]

just glue zoas on them

tried this once , the zoas survived didn't thrive .

 

[blaxsun]

This thread made my evening!

 

[James_O]

just glue zoas on them

 

[Goaway]

I was wondering how in the stores and ocean their shells look so good but as soon as they ended up in my tank they became ugly?

Maybe consider nerite snails? No 2 nerites look the same and are very beautiful. These other guys don't understand.
and an algae blenny. My blenny actually does keep my snail shells pretty clean.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

IMO, one of the reasons that coralline dies on snails is that they sometimes sit at the top of the water line with their shells sticking out. The coralline dries out and eventually dies. The snail itself stays in the water and does not likely even notice the outside of its shell is out of the water.

The same doesn't happen in the ocean. Some snails get exposed at low tide, but they likely aren't coralline covered anyway.