Cerith Snail

Care at a glance

Overview

A peaceful, do-it-all scavenger and algae grazer that cleans glass, rock, and sand and is happy in groups. It is fully reef-safe and ignores corals. Because it works the sand bed at night, a lot of its useful cleaning happens when the lights are off. Stock roughly one per 15 to 20 litres and supplement with algae wafers if the tank is very clean.

In the wild

Cerith snails come from shallow reef and lagoon sand flats and work both the sand bed and the rock. They prefer larger, well-established systems with a deep sand bed they can plough through and are most active after dark. As with other marine snails they will not tolerate copper medications and are sensitive to elevated nitrate, so acclimate slowly.

Good to know

Cerithium snails have long, tall, spire-shaped shells and are unusually versatile cleaners: they eat detritus, uneaten food, fish waste, film algae, hair algae, diatoms, and cyanobacteria, and they burrow to help oxygenate the substrate. They are one of the few clean-up crew snails that will readily lay eggs in the aquarium, though the larvae are hard to raise.

Did you know

Cerith snails often breed in the reef tank, laying spiral egg strings on the glass, making them one of the few clean-up crew snails you may see reproducing at home.

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