Best algae eaters hands down. However, they have a tendency to leave little white eggs on everything, which can be quite difficult to remove. I removed all Nerites from my display tanks because of the eggs. They do eat Anubias on occasion.
they are indeed great algae eaters but they lay eggs all over driftwoods.. the eggs dont hatch in freshwater though but they certainly make ya driftwood look gross with all the white eggs all over it.
I don't really mind the eggs, although I can see how you could... Once my tank stabilized and the algae went mostly away, a few of them died and I think the ones still in there have been eating the java fern. Just not enough algae in a smaller tank for a dedicated algae eater.
I have six of them and all have different pattern. I supplement their diet with hikari algea wafers. They love it. It aso helps out wih their shells. They do occassionally escape. I use that as a good indicator that something is not right with water parameters.
AHAH! Prior to reading the above entries I had no idea where all the white eggs where coming from. Annoying indeed but not a deal breaker, these are amazing snails that do good work, and yes they prefer plant leaves over algae wafers if your tank is short on algae. mine will put holes in sword leaves, Lilly pads... pretty much any broad leaved plant in the tank. Still I would not remove them as thanks in large part to them my tank is immaculate(eggs aside).
They're surprisingly hardy. I bought 2 of them at a local fish store (big al's) and they just dominated my 10gal freshwater. Most people complain about the eggs being annoying, and they say they don't hatch in freshwater, but somehow mine did.
I keep a single zebra nerite in a 5 gallon, unheated, heavilly planted five gallon cherry shrimp breeding tank. It has completely cleaned every surface of algae within a week, even anubias leaves. I haven't seen it eat the anubias at all, just the algae. Apparently nocturnal, all night long mine cruises along the glass and every morning I find it resting in the same spot on the lower side of a small piece of driftwood in the left back corner, where it usually stays until the evening. Sometimes a shrimp will alight on it and ride it around the aquarium. Probably the best algae eater I've ever come across, they're pretty, hardy, small, unoffensive, and crazy good at their job. Perfect for every tank.
I have two Zebra Nerites (but their stripes are so small you can't see them unless you look really close), and one of them is an awesome algae eater. The other one, not so much. It rides on the other nerite's shell 75% of the time, and when it eats, it only leaves little trails through the algae. One of them only laid eggs once, and the majority of them were on my white divider, so you couldn't see them unless you were looking for them.
