Looking for nerata snails?!?

[7Enigma]

Folks I've been searching now for a couple days and cannot find any place that sells nerite snails (without spending $40 or shipping across the country). Anyone know of a place on the NE region that carries these?

Thanks in advance.

For those that don't know: Nerite snails are considered to be THE best snails for a planted tank as they will readily eat algae in the tank but not touch your plants. Better yet they are originally marine or brackish water snails and WILL NOT multiply in a FW setup. This is probably why they are so tough to find locally since they cannot easily be bred.

 

[src]

I wonder if we could talk any of the sellers into a "Group Buy". I've seen them done for many different products, but I'm not sure if anyone has done it with fish/snails yet.

Since snails are so much easier to ship, it should be possible to pool a bunch of purchases and have them send the packages out priority mail.

 

[7Enigma]

That would be a great idea. Group buys unfortunately take a lot of planning and work, and most importantly a lot of delay between wanting the product and getting it. I've been involved in a couple for various items on different forums and don't have wonderful experiences with them.

I'm thinking I might just go with aquatic plant depot. While they charge a steep $12 shipping fee, the olive nerites are only $0.59 a piece. So 10 snails would be about 18 bucks. Unfortunately these look to be simple looking nerites (just as their name implies, dark marbles), if I'm paying close to $20 for snails it would be nice to get the prettier varieties I've seen online such as the tiger nerites (striped), and the staghorn (protruding spines from the shell).

I'm also worried I might waste 20 bucks if my tiger barbs decide to snack on these guys! They don't seem to bother my MTS too much, but they generally only come out at night when the fish are relaxing.

 

[src]

Maybe we can do a "regional staged" purchase. One person in a region buys the snails, then re-ships them to others in their region. It would be good to have the buyer QT them for a few days to let them recover from the initial trip, and probably to overbuy (10%?) to account for losses, but overall I think the group could save a ton of money and get what they actually wanted, rather than settling.

 

[czcz]

if I'm paying close to $20 for snails it would be nice to get the prettier varieties I've seen online such as the tiger nerites (striped), and the staghorn (protruding spines from the shell).

FWIW, I paid $6 a snail for Tiger, Horned, and Mosaic snails at a speacialty LFS. I remember someone on AquaBid in the North East selling the Tigers. Not cheap, but cool.

'Case you use an open tank, be aware the Olive nerites are known to climb out.

 

[JohnPaul]

sound like pretty cool snails, I'd love to have some. Also, I do have a 10g brackish, so I wonder how they'd do in there...maybe they *would* breed?

 

[7Enigma]

From what I've read, its possible that they will breed, but my guess is highly unlikely. They would be acclimated to FW, so you would need to slowly introduce salt to their environment, and who knows what being in a FW environment for any length of time does to their reproductive systems ie they might be able to produce eggs (as apparently they readily do even in FW), but the eggs may not be viable. Would definately be great if you could though, bet you could make some $$$$ locally since all the stores I called had none. Especially those staghorn and tiger varieties, seems almost too good to be true. Not only are they the best algae eaters that won't touch plants, but they also look very nice.

 

[Thebluyak]

id love to have some also it would sure come in handy, nothing else can live in my tank besides snails