Spiny Astrea Snail

The Spiny Astrea Snail combines an algae-grazing habit with a strongly sculptured shell. Its pointed shell projections give it a different outline from smoother reef snails as it travels over established rock and aquarium glass.

Provide enough mature surface growth to support its grazing. Film algae and accessible growth on rock are useful food resources; if these decline, offer an appropriate marine algae-based supplement and confirm access. Overstocking snails can exhaust food even while patches of unwanted algae remain elsewhere.

Check the aquarium for overturned animals during maintenance, since Astrea-type snails can have difficulty recovering after a fall. Leave room between fragile coral frags and regularly traveled rock surfaces, maintain stable salinity and shell-supporting water chemistry, and avoid fish or crabs that prey on snails.