Cloudy water

[fearlessfisch]

My whole tank was covered with a small amount of algae. I dropped in 5 nerites and they had my entire tank cleaned up in a week. Awesome cleaners.

Hope it's okay if I jump in here. I'm curious about the nerites. What do they eat after the brown algae phase passes? Are they comfortable living just in a regular tank, and will they reproduce and take it over?

 

[King Fisher]

They eat algae, biofilm, phytoplankton and diatoms (brown algae). I guess they will eat on algae wafers and vegetables like cucumber and lettuce. To be honest, I've never been able to get them to eat algae wafers or vegetables. If you have a tank that doesn't get steady algae the nerites tend to starve to death IME.

Nerites don't reproduce in freshwater, only saltwater. That's what makes them nice to have IMO.

 

[fearlessfisch]

Hmm. I don't want to starve any snail. The brown algae bloom never lasts very long. Perhaps I will just tolerate it.



Thanks for the reply.

 

[King Fisher]

A couple of my tanks have issues with light hitting the tank about a third of the day and I dose with liquid fertilizer for my plants which seems to add to a little bit of algae. So my nerites in those tanks do fine and have a steady meal. Some people get them to eat vegetables but it never worked for me the few times I tried.

If you like them and want to keep them just leave your tank lights on longer. It should produce enough algae for them.