Miracle Snail Food

[Donya]

This week my invert-only 12g went from algae-free to having green, fluffy tank walls--something that's formerly been kept in check by my large grazer snails. I have a Strombus conch in there that requries suplimental food, but nothing special gets put in for the other inverts. I found a new brand of dried food and the conch seemed to be eating an awful lot of it (I assumed, since it eats at night manily) right around the time the algae stated spreading. I first thought maybe a phosphate problem, but it turns out, after watching with the lights out, that the Turbos are preferentially eating the new food over what's on the tank walls and won't eat "natural" algae now even if I pick them up and place them in the middle of it. They go right back to the rocks by the conch's feeding spot and wait. Even the Ceriths materialize out of the substrate to eat this stuff at night. The "miracle" food is Julian Spring's Sea Veggies, Green Seaweed (Porphyra yezoensis). I havn't seen this happen with any other brands of seaweed/algae foods I've used. I may have to stop using that brand of food to get the tank walls cleaned, but at the moment I just think it's too funny

 

[Opcn]

What you have is a double whammy of sorts, more nutrients and less grazing, I'd say stop the feeding and if the conch isn't gettting enought food find a new home for it.

 

[Donya]

The conch is the main animal for the tank, so the other animals are secondary if it comes to an issue of food competition. But, the conch is getting plenty of food and from a variety of sources--including cleaning a ring around the bottom of the tank now. It just wasn't eating the entire volume of the new dried food that I thought it was (that volume has been cut back now to closer to what the conch eats).

 

[steelhealr]

I think you are overfeeding your tank. Most likely you are overestimating what the conch needs to survive. The main job of the cleanup crew is to scavenge for leftovers, detritus and algae. Sounds like you're 'ordering food in' and they now slackin' on the job.

Don't forget ...food contains phosphates in various levels. Overfeed and you add phosphate, nutrients, change eating patterns etc. SH

 

[Donya]

The non-conch snails are the only ones responding in the described way to that brand of food I've checked to see if they will do the same behavior for other foods, and the reaction is specific to that single brand. By eating at night and making it look like it was all the conch's doing, I was duped into feeding more until I uncovered the cause.

I know it is considered strange or "risky" to feed snails (although the waste output in this particular tank is small in comparison to what I've even seen generated from my 1 clown goby), but there is a difference between a "suvival" level of nutrition and a level at which the animal is at its best health in captivity. The hermit is probably the only thing I don't monitor closely. For snails, I even take the time to inspect and de-parasite new ones, even though they would probably survive with the parasites in a slightly weakened state. The same arguments exist that freshwater snails can "survive" in captivity as well without any suplimental feeding, but I've studied those guys long enough to know the health costs they often suffer from that. I don't consider my cleanup crew just a purpose-filler.

At any rate, that brand of food that caused the Turbos to be couch potatoes is used for feeding fish as well as invertebrates. Part of the reason I made the original post was that, should anyone be considering using that brand of food in their tank for fish, they should expect to see a pile of fat happy snails on any leftovers, which may not have good results in a display tank based on what I've watched in my tank. It's not a situation that I saw described on this board so I thought it would be worth a mention.