Sand Sifting Snail
Generally fine with fish be careful of large aggressive fish that may eat snails.
Sand sifting snail. The nassarius snail even descends into the sand bed with only their snorkel sticking out. But there are some great reef safe sand sifting snails that can flip over when they need to avoiding starvation and predation. The nassarius snail is a small scavenger with an oval spiral shell that resembles an olive pit.
Sand sifting as it feeds heavily on settled particulate organic matter i e. How many can i keep. These will happily consume the detritus and algae in your sandy substrate.
This behavior helps to keep the sand stirred. This stirring of the sand will promote healthy bacterial life in your sand bed thus promoting healthier water quality in the saltwater aquarium system. Nassarius generally does not feed on algae.
The nassarius snail is a sand sifting snail and will graze on micro algae and detritus in the sand. Can be kept together if there is enough food. Not only can they be quite attractive and interesting to observe but they also seem to be the ultimate sand sifter for larger systems.
It is not picky in this regard and will greedily consume anything from detritus to decaying animal flesh. Conch snails will burrow into your aquarium sand and sift the substrate eating slime algae and cyano bacteria film therefore producing a clean and oxygenated sand bed. Nevertheless this tiny snail performs a big clean up job on tank bottoms by constantly burrowing into and out of the substrate surface i e.
These snails are super easy to keep and feed. They prefer environments with large open deep silty substrates. Snails have gained importance as aquarium animals.
Nassarius snails nassarius sp are excellent scavengers and great sand sifters. I stopped by the lfs today to pic up some hermits and the guy there tried to sell me some sand sifting snails as well as the substrate in my tank is getting a lot of algae but my question is has anyone kept these sand sifting snails in their tank and what experience do they have with them. How compatible is it with fish.
Nassarius snails will be an excellent addition to your saltwater tank. Therefore if you are looking for a cleanup crew for a saltwater aquarium you have found it. As it searches for food the nassarius snail helps prevent compaction and aerates aquarium substrate.