biOrb Aquarium | Snails in a biOrb?

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Video Description
You may have already picked-up that I'm not a strong advocate of adding chemicals to an aquarium in order to solve so called "problems", especially when there are more natural and interesting solutions available. This video covers the addition of Nerite snails as a means to he;lp keep your tank clean and to keep algae in check. There are a broad range of Nerite snails to choose from with varying shell colours, markings and shapes.

My suggestion, for a 30l biOrb, is to to get no more than two. Anymore than this means they may struggle to have enough food to maintain them. Warmer aquarium water is preferred and in the UK, heated tanks are best.

Tank water ammonia and nitrite should always be zero, and nitrates should be low as possible (zero ideally) but certainly no higher than 40ppm.

For fairly new aquariums, a couple of young (smaller) snails are probably best. These will slowly grow in tune with any tank algae growth.

If your tank already has an algae issue, please don't expect to see an overnight success as it takes a little while for these guys to get on top of things. After a week or two you should start to see a difference! They will clean everything in your tank, even cleaning algae off live plants and off your ceramic media. They will clean below the water and above it!

Nerite snails originate from warm climates and brackish water environments. As they require brackish (water containing salt) water to reproduce, they are very difficult to breed. Therefore, you will certainly not have a mass snail population issue in your aquarium. This often the opposite to most other species of snails (which breed like...erm... snails), with numbers increasingly rapidly!

There are many variations but, generally, they can be described as:
Zebra - with bands (stripes) across their shells which are are usually black and yellow in colour.
Tiger - similar to zebras in appearance but have a more intense orange colour. Their stripes are often more jagged in nature which gives each snail a slightly different look.
Horned (or Bee) tend to have broad black and yellow stripes and are different from other Nerite due to a series of “horns” along their backs.
Olive - are olive in colour and generally don’t have a shell pattern. Their black line stands out against the olive colour.

Please don't be put off from ordering your Nerite snails by post! They are not the same as tropical fish and are well suited to postal delivery to you (all of my snails have been supplied to me in the post!). If you can't buy them locally get them from the same place I do: https://amzn.to/3Io8Jp5. If the Amazon link doesn't work just search using the words 'Nerite snails'.

When you get them...
It is important that you acclimatise your new snails to your tank conditions (i.e similar to fish). Initially leave them to float in a bag or container on the surface of your tank water for about 30 mins (this it to get them acclimatised to temperature!). After that, start introducing a few drops of your aquarium water to your bag/container. Do this every 10 mins for about one hour. These steps are to get them acclimatised to your tank's water. Once added to the tank, the snails can be active within a short period of time but they also may take up to several days before they fully settle in to their new environment and start moving around the tank.

As always, a big fishy thanks for watching!
Mark
Step-by-Step biOrb Aquariums
#stepbystepbiorb


For advice, please feel free to contact me directly through the Comments on this Channel.

biOrb Aquariums | Snails or not?