New Nerite Snails! (In Quarantine)

New Nerite Snails! (In Quarantine)

I have wanted to get some nerite snails for a long time, and today I finally made it over to the local fish store (LFS) to get a couple!  I originally just wanted to get one snail, but when I got there I couldn’t decide between the zebra and the red spot… so I ended up bringing home one of each!  I’m going to quarantine them for 1-2 weeks with daily 100% water changes to flush out any water they’re holding in their shells that might contain parasites from the store tanks (eek!).  Then I’ll put them in my 75 gallon goldfish tank.

Nerite snails are great for algae control and they won’t eat live plants. You need to be careful not to get too many nerites in one tank though because they can run out of algae to eat pretty fast! I chose the larger zebra and red spot snails (as opposed to the smaller horned nerites) because my goldfish are pretty large, and they could easily choke on a horned nerite snail if they tried to eat it.  Nerite snails are also nice because they cannot reproduce in freshwater, so you won’t end up with an out-of-control population of snails. They do sometimes produce egg clutches in a freshwater aquarium, but the eggs will not hatch.

Here’s a photo of them in their QT bucket.  Aren’t they cute?!  I’ll post an update once their QT is over and they’re in the tank!

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