Feeding Nerites

Hi! Good to see a great new forum for inverts at last!

I have a question regarding my 2 nerites that i keep in a heavily planted 10 gallon tank... having stripped it clean of all algae, as they do, can anyone recommend a list of alternative types of food? Ive tried cucumber which went down fairly well (but i dont imagine is very nutritious???) and algae wafers which they've turned their noses up at!? Be really gratefull if anyone has any ideas!

Nerites are notoriously hard to feed. Getting them to eat cucumber is better than I have ever done! I wouldent set you sights on anything elce.

The best thing to do is to have very few of them in a tank such that there is always algae available in high quantities. 2 in a 10gal is the maximum, I woudent go for any more than this. You may find that one dies off, then this should leave enough food for the other to live off. I would also recomend removing any competitors for algae that are in the tank (plecs mainly).

I have found that nerites like to eat spinach. Blanch it first for a few minutes in boiling water then lay it on the gravel and place some stones on it so that it lays flat (this is important otherwise the nerites can't seem to 'find' it!) Hope this helps!

Thanks for the replies... as i say, any ideas gratefully received.

I may have to go back to cultivating algae in a jar. I used to do this but i found it all got a bit out of control!

Mine tried it's best to get to boiled-broccoli. Couldn't quite manage it with the cories pushing it around though.

I've seen marine nerites at the lfs eat those seaweed sheets you can buy, just placed on the bottom of the tank touching the side(so they can climb on without going over sand/gravel-which they dont seem too keen on), or with a sucker at the top so the bottom touches the side. This is the stuff we fed them there: http://www.food4fish.co.uk/seaweed.html.

These things can be expensive at the lfs, but you can buy brandless ones on ebay cheaper (like most fish food), do a search for "Dried Nori seaweed".