How many snails?

[bootz63]

I was looking at buying a larger clean up crew so was looking on the reef cleaners web site. When I looked at their "quick crews" I was a little surprised at the # of snails that rec for the amount of gallons I have "135" . In total with the four dif kinds there is almost 250 snails! I am newbie but sounded like a lot. Does any one have any advice on the # and types I should have?

 

[lunacris]

Ive heard the old per gallon rule which is cool unless they run out of food you find the happy place as your system matures

 

[Tangency]

The website pre-packed cleanup crews always seemed excessive to me.

In the end, I decided to pick up a mix of 10~20 snails and crabs at a time from the LFS. Populations will balance with the availability of food and your water quality. I recommend adding a few at a time (every few weeks) as you see fit.

For example: my system is a one year old 90 gallon, over the course of a few months, I have added 10 red legged hermit crabs, 10 blue legged hermit crabs, 20 astera snails, 10 nassarius snails, and a ton of Collinista snails that have hitchhiked on the live rock. Currently, I am down to about half of the original population.