Mollusk of the Week (Astraea tecta) Astrea snails and relatives

[herefishiefishie]

Every week I will be posting a new mollusk for discussion. Please post everything you know about this week's mollusk, to include pics, care and feeding habits, optimal environment, common names, and anything else you can think of.

There are several snails that are often confused with this week's snail, so I would like this thread to include a dialog on this species and some of its synonyms or near-synonyms. These snails are your typical, popular reef janitors.

These are the usual suspects:


turbo
Lithopoma
Astraea
Trochus

Let's have a discussion of these excellent, helpful reef janitors.

[mgk65]

Of course to begin this discussion, it must start with the authoritative articles by Dr. Ron:

Grazing Snails, Part I
http://www.animalnetwork.com/fish2/aqfm/1999/july/wb/default.asp

Grazing Snails, Part II
http://www.animalnetwork.com/fish2/aqfm/1999/nov/wb/default.asp

Of these types of snails, I have trochus snails and they are very active and eat diatoms non-stop.

I have never heard of lithopoma.

Do astraea snails eat algae? Do they fall and not get back up?

mgk

[Sea Dragon]

My snails were purchased as Astrea snails. The shells start out as pearly white before becoming covered in algae. The spiral grows straight up. I really like these guys. They can flip themselves over and eat lots of algae. Mostly diatoms but some hair if it's short enough. They are also pretty fast growers, having doubled in size in about 6 months.

1.024-1.026 SG and 78-82 degrees F seems to work well for them. They have a tendency to stick exclusivly to the glass once they get on it, but it's easy enough to pick them off and put them back on the rocks when needed.

[herefishiefishie]

I find that Astreas tend to live a lot longer than the "mexican turbos."

[herefishiefishie]

Last call for info on Astrea snails before this thread goes to the archive.