Top Crown Snails: Awesome Algae Eaters
I absolutely love my two Top Crown Snails. They are excellent algae eaters – they eat pretty much everything off of the glass of my 75 gallon saltwater aquarium. It’s actually almost unbelievable to me how much stuff these snails eat. I’ve never had any other type of snail, large or small, with such a voracious appetite.
And it’s not just the fact that the Top Crown Snails have a huge appetite – it’s the fact that they have a huge appetite for all the stuff that grows that drives me crazy. The brown algae, the diatoms, the green algae and other junk. If I don’t like it and have found it a nuisance growing on my glass and hardware, these snails have eaten it.
From liveaquaria.com:
The Top Crown Snail is a great tank cleaner for larger saltwater reef aquariums. Compared to its Caribbean counterparts, this snail hailing from the Eastern Pacific Ocean is impressive in size and appetite. This member of the Astraeinae family is dressed in a beautiful shell that develops a remarkable top-like shape.
Yep that pretty much sums it up.
Here’s a quick shot of a couple Top Crown Snails hanging from a feeding ring that is floating about within an aquarium.
As you can see, these have some girth. And they can get much larger. I’ve found one of these snails crawling into my protein skimmer even. He didn’t go inside, but was getting close.
They can also move really fast when they want to, but in a snail type of way. One moment you will see it on one side of the tank, and the next minute it’s on the other side of the tank. But you won’t see it move in between. I think they teleport sometimes.
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Luke is the owner and caretaker of a 75 gallon aquarium in his home studio. Good times.
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Hey man perfect timing. i have a 165 gal reef setup and have some sort of algea thats just driving me up a wall. im looking for a snail that has a gigantic appitite and will eat it. the algea looks kinda like filamentous and diatomous together. i have astrea snails, margarite snails, and even mexican turbo snails. they wont touch the stuff. in your opinion will they eat it and rid my tank of it? i dont mind buying like 30 of these guys just to rid my tank of this algea i just want it gone!!
thanxs for your time and opinion.
Hmm good question – yeah I did notice that the Crown Snails ate stuff that my other snails wouldn’t touch – I mostly have turbo snails and astrea snails now. The Top Crowns would eat the brown/red stuff that other snails I had at the time didn’t like
In my opinion it’s worth a shot – I would suggest putting in just couple and see what they eat – and if they eat the stuff you’re trying to get rid of then invest in more.
However, I would also suggest that if you’re having algae problems maybe try looking into filter media that helps remove phosphates and lower nitrates, like ChemiPure, RowaPhos, etc – that stuff helped me curb my algae problems too
I have a refugium packed with some Chemipure my ammonia nitrites and nitrates are at 0 phospates 0 i use only RO water. i was using iodine which could have been my problem. so imma get like 30 top crowns since my tank is 165 gallons with 300 pounds of live rock. thanxs for the tip.