How do you feed snails in QT??

[NJBillyV]

Just started my invert QT and dumped a nice variety of snails and a cleaner shrimp in.

But, the tank doesn't have any algae yet, it's new. So what do I feed my snails that are herbivores? I put a couple of algae pellets in but they didn't seem like they ate them.

Do I break the algae pellets up and put them in? Or is there something else I can feed them?

Thoughts?

 

[minus9]

Nori

 

[NJBillyV]

Oh, so no algae pellets just feed them nori sheets?

 

[ScottR]

Do you know what kind of snails they are? Not all snails share the same diet.

 

[Doctorgori]

put a small amt of food in there... a very small amount ..
with a lil light you should see algae in les than a week
...depending on type, snails should be fine

 

[naterealbig]

What I did for my QT was scrape some green algae of the side of one of my other (or You could use a friend's or lfs) tanks, and added it to the QT water column. I added some phosphate that I purchased from Amazon - raise to 0.1 ppm or so. Literally the next day I had green film on the glass for snails to eat. Like @ScottR said though - the species matters. Some are scavengers (prepared food is fine) and some are not (live algae film required).

 

[NJBillyV]

Thanks for the help guys!

I have Turbo, Turban, and Cerith snails. I'm aware that the Ceriths don't need algae but the others do.

Unfortunately I have no algae to put in the tank from another tank. I do have a grow light over the tank in hopes of growing algae but nothing yet, it's been 10 days.

I guess I should add some phosphate but where do I get some. I looked on BRS and didn't see any. Any suggestions, perhaps some tap water?

And how about nori, should I just put a little piece in for them to eat, when I did that with the algae wafers they didn't go near them?

 

[DxMarinefish]

Just attach a nori piece to a cured rock or clean PVC pipe. You can use a rubber band if you don't have a clip.

They will find it. If you have a lot of them, then 2 pieces will do to prevent the dominant ones getting all the gumbo

 

[PatW]

If my snails find the clip with nori on it, they settle down for a meal.

 

[naterealbig]

Just attach a nori piece to a cured rock or clean PVC pipe. You can use a rubber band if you don't have a clip.

They will find it. If you have a lot of them, then 2 pieces will do to prevent the dominant ones getting all the gumbo

If my snails find the clip with nori on it, they settle down for a meal.

Great information here - never realized grazing snails would take prepared algae. Will definitely be adding this to my bag of tricks...

 

[NJBillyV]

Great information!

Bought some Nori sheets and used a rock to hold them on the bottom of the tank. Actually two rocks and two nori sheets. Did that last night (2-23-21)

This morning....BAM It was a snail feeding fest. Every snail had found a spot to graze. That right there was an amazing thing. Just them finding the sheets was pretty impressive. Apparently they were hungry (bad me).

You guys rock!