Supplemental conch feeding?

[Dean Stell]

My tank (55g) is only a 3 months old and I bought a fighting conch a month or so ago to clean up algae off the sand bed. He's been such an industrious little guy that I kinda worry he isn't getting enough to eat now.

I've just noticed that he is suddenly trying to climb up onto the live rock and propping himself up on the glass and reaching his little proboscis as far as he can.

Do I need to give him some kinda supplement? If so....what do I give? I swung by my LFS today and they were just slammed busy, so I didn't want to bug them too much, but the guy said I could rubber band some sheet algae to a rock????? How do I do that? Or is there a tablet I could give? Or would he eat lettuce or some other thing?

Or is he perfectly fine and is just like a dog: has nothing else to do but act hungry.

Any help is much appreciated.

[sjwitt]

I don't know if it would work (never had a conch) ... but to 'rubber band some algae to a rock" he's talking about getting the sheet algae (nori), break off a piece of it and rubber band it to a small rock. It would then be like a rock covered in algae and maybe your conch would eat it that way.

[lordofthereef]

What do you feed the tank? I feed a lot of formula one and two pellets. The conch goes crazy for the ones that sink to the bottom.

[greech]

They do that every now and then. Unless you are running a bare bottom ULNS tank and you feed your tank regularly, 1 conch in 55 should have plenty of food without any kind of supplemental feeding.

[SushiGirl]

Originally Posted by sjwitt

I don't know if it would work (never had a conch) ... but to 'rubber band some algae to a rock" he's talking about getting the sheet algae (nori), break off a piece of it and rubber band it to a small rock. It would then be like a rock covered in algae and maybe your conch would eat it that way.

It works. I do it once or twice a week for ours. They chow down. The ceriths and strombus snails join in, as well.

[Dean Stell]

Originally Posted by SushiGirl

It works. I do it once or twice a week for ours. They chow down. The ceriths and strombus snails join in, as well.

Does it make them lazy for their full-time job of cleaning the sandbed?

[SushiGirl]

Not that I've noticed. We call them the vacuum cleaners because they look like cannister vacs and they always have their nose hose going all over. We have one that likes to climb up on rocks. The other night, I caught him hanging on the glass by his foot with his butt about 1/4" off the sand. He slowly sank back to the sand, but he was trying like heck to be a "regular snail" LOL.

[PCFisher66]

Mine just popped up out of the sand bed for a couple days after disappearing for 3 months. After having a look around back down he went.

[aleonn]

If you have a pretty open sand bed, then I wouldn't be inclined to feed supplementally. However, if you have lots of rocks and coral colonies taking up lots of space on the substrate, you can throw in extra pellets or silversides for him to clean up.

[SushiGirl]

We have ours in a 55 also, really not much open sand in a 55 with live rock. Plus, we have no algae in our tank. We have a 140 in the garage we'll be setting up sometime early next year, so I supplement them until we can move some stuff over to the bigger tank. 2 is definitely too many for a 55. Ours will sometimes go after mysis on the sand when I feed too, but they love the sheet algae.

[Collinrb]

Ive got a queen in my 55 and she makes a daily round it seems of the sandbed. She does pull-ups from time to time when she tries to reach high on the glass. Very very cool additions to any tank. Plus theyre workhorses

[jgsteven]

My strawberry conch eats normal sinking pellets when they fall far from the goby. You might try that.

In a previous tank I kept a sea hare whom I fed nori-sheets. Angel fish and algae eaters like them, but I think they were the reason my tank phosphate was really high. It grew crazy amounts of algae (which was quickly eaten by the sea hare...)