Turbo Snail Questions

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TygGer

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Aug 18, 2003
Messages
478
Location
Northern Va
Ever since I added a couple turbos, they've cleaned about 90% of one of my heavily covered algae LR. But has anyone else noticed an extra amount of poop???! They seem to poop a lot! Is this normal?

Also, on the rock that they've cleaned, it also looks like they've eaten some of the coraline algae because it use to be a darker purple color. Now, many spots are lighter in color, almost pink.
 
I have 8 of them in my tank and yes they do poop alot! You can always tell where they've been 8O As for the coraline, I didnt notice any of mine getting lighter or disappearing. I would say that maybe you had some type of algae on top of the coraline but I dont think it grows over coraline??

HTH,
Rich
 
I also have them in my tank and yes they have eaten the coraline. I have many white spots on my LR where coraline use to be. I am thinking about removing them.

HTH,
liontech
 
It is quite annoying... I don't think I will be buying any more turbos! Hopefully they are just pooping a lot at the moment because they ate large amounts of algae covering one of my LR....
 
they ar just pooping because there isa ton of foo there. it will go away with time. after they have been there for some time they will not poop all over. as for removeing coraline i dont think that it is them. if any thing they help it becasue they uncover it from the dust and other stuff on top of it. and they also help spred it around the tank.
 
I had to return 2 Turbos that were eating my coraline. They also did a great job on alge but seemed to prefer my purple coreline.
 
At this point, I have seen no research that indicates that turbo's eat coralline. Their mouth is not designed to cut through the hard shell-like algae. War is correct that they will aide in the proppropagationthe coralline because they clean it as well as "brush" it when they move over it. This helps it release the spore into the water column.

Most of the time, the coralline dies off because of excessive lighting, fluctuation in water chemistry, or low levels of Ca.

Urchins are known to eat coralline, but they provide the same service that a bear in the forest would. He eats the berries and then poops out the seeds a mile or so away. The long term effect is more coralline over the entire tank in a shorter amount of time than just natural growth.

HTH :wink:
Squishy
 
They seem to prefer the algae on the rocks as oppose the the algae on the glass. I guess I have to observe them over a longer period of time... hopefully they'll get the algae of the glass so I dont have to scrape.

A little off topic, what is considered excessive lighting for coralline?
 
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