is 1 turbo snail enought to clean a 3ft tank?

[dryDiver]

i also bought 1 cowrie - dont know if its a good green n red algae eater.

do any of them eat corals ???

[fishiee]

Turbos are reef safe. Some cowries, however, are not. You will have to do research on the species of your cowrie. Also note that large turbo snails and cowries will knock corals over if the corals get the the way, so you might want to consider that...most reefers don't like it.

And as to will one turbo clean a 3 foot tank? The answer will obviously be no. Unless you have a mutant one of course. Check with the fish shop and ask them to recommend you a number. Also remember that turbo snails will only remove SOME algae. They ignore some types of algae or simply miss out a spot or 2. It is best to get a variety of organisms to finish off your algae, a lawnmower benny, a tang.... whatever. and even in saying so, that will not be enough. you will still have to manually stick your hand in the tank every once in a while to get rid of the remainding algae yourself, although the frequency of you doing this maintainance will be reduced with the help of these critters.

[comycus]

My 2 turbo do a relatively good job of cleaning my algae. Of course i have 10+ nassarius and sand shifting star to handle my sandbed. Might be adding a sand dollar.

I suggest to slowly add your cleaning crew. If not enough, add afew more, n continue the process. You don't wanna add 100 snails into your tank, n suddenly have zero algae in afew days and have 80% of them die on you due to lack of algae.

Depends on how paranoid you are, you can look at hermit crabs, sea cucumbers, abalone, bumblebee, nassarius, tronchus snails to start off with. Effective, but look up some of the disadvantages of keeping them.

[dryDiver]

tks bros. so far so good; just knocked down 1 coral n cowrie occupied n scare my fire shrimp out of his cave hehe. i checked my cowrie is 'arabic', so i will start a new thread on it