Olive Nerite Snail

Olive Nerite Snails are praised as algae eating machines. This is why they are so prized in fish keeping, in fresh water, brackish water, and even salt water. This snail is truly versatile, being able to adapt to so many types of water. Although they are adaptable to the different ranges of water, their eggs are only viable in brackish or salt water. Breeders are able to make a pretty good bit of money for themselves breeding these snails and acclimating them to fresh water.

I wanted to see for myself how well these snails munched on algae. I let my tanks go for a while before I received some Nerites in the mail, giving new meaning to snail mail.

You can see I haven’t done any cleaning in a while.

After two days a significant dent was made in the algae on the glass. These zig zag tracks are on all four sides of the 20 gallon tank, all done by this one little snail.

The little Olive Nerite Snail will stay stuck to the big one for a whole day at a time. The MTS wanted in on the action too.

I don’t know why the one snail stays stuck to the larger snail for hours on end. I suppose it’s mating, but I don’t know what those threads are coming out there.

The third one just decided to hop off the glass and join in on the fun.

Apparently Olive Nerite Snails are prolific lovers, not just algae eaters.