Who Gives A Fish Forums

So I'm still trying to wrap my head around this whole trumpet snail thing. I bought a few Malyaskento4 trumpet snails on Ebay years ago for basically nothing, and at the time I just tossed them in my freshwater tank without thinking much of it. Fast forward to me breaking down that tank and distributing the pieces to smaller ones - that's when I realized I had hundreds of these snails everywhere. They're actually pretty cool, keeping the walls spotless and all.

Now, here's the weird part - I just set up my old bio-cube for a seahorse tank, and I found one of these trumpet snails in there too. I'm talking a completely different environment, saltwater this time. I've got a hermit crab, a dwarf blue, and this little guy making up my cleanup crew. Has anyone else had any experience with these snails in a marine setup? Will they eat marine algae, or are they just gonna die off? I've got a stash of caulerpa in there that I'd rather not have them munch on. Any info would be great, I'm kinda freaked out but also curious about how this little guy ended up in my tank.

I've often thought about trying that out. Those Malayskento4 Trumpet Snails do bear a resemblance to Cerith snails, and supposedly they handle low-end brackish environments just fine, so it's definitely possible they'll thrive in marine environments as well.

But I have to ask, are you positive that's a MTS? There are a lot of snails with similar shell shapes, and I wouldn't want to jump to conclusions. That being said, this is a really cool discovery. If it does reproduce, you've got a potential goldmine on your hands - they're a much more affordable option than wild-caught snails, after all.

I'm pretty sure it's an MTS, I mean it's a dead ringer for the ones I've seen online. Found this picture that's basically a clone of my little guy. As for speed, I stumbled upon this crazy video - MTS in time lapse. I'm telling you, if snails moved like that in real life, I'd be out of the aquarium game, it's kinda unnerving.

That video is seriously awesome.

I'm highly skeptical it's a trumpet snail, to be honest. For an animal to be euryhaline, it needs specific biological adaptations - you can't just drop a freshwater snail in saltwater and expect it to survive. The osmotic shock would likely kill it in minutes, if not seconds.

It's much more plausible that it's a cerith snail, especially given the circumstances. I mean, for it to be a trumpet snail, it would have had to somehow magically appear in your tank, fully grown, and then survive in full-strength seawater - that's just not likely, in my experience. But hey, ceriths are awesome too, and they'll breed quickly, just not as fast as trumpet snails.

I'm not entirely sure about ceriths, but I've read they can tolerate brackish conditions, maybe even low-end marine. I'm no expert, but I've seen some stuff suggesting they can handle a mix of fresh and saltwater. Anyone know if they can actually go back and forth between the two, or is it more of a one-way deal?