- Common Name:- Bumblebee Snail
- Latin Name:- Engina mendicaria
- Final Size:- Up to 1.5cm
- Purchase Size:- Approx 0.5cm - 1cm
- Diet: - Detritus, Decomposing left over foods, Flake, Pellet, Frozen Food
- Aquarium Size:- 20 Litres+
- Water Parameters:- SG 1.023 - 1.026, pH 8.1 - 8.4, Nitrite 0, Ammonia 0, Will not tolerate Copper
- Compatibility:- Coral Safe
- Top Tips:- Popular choice for their habit of eating the pest Vermetid Snails
Bumblebee Snails (Engina mendicaria) are a species of snail collected from Indo Pacific waters. They have an attractive striped shell that can vary from a pale lemon to a bright canary yellow and rich black. They snail itself is black with a black operculum (the covering to the shell opening).
Diet
Bumblebee Snails are a species that are extremely easy to feed owing to their opportunistic nature. They are super handy to have as part of the clean up crew where they will eat any left over foods not eaten by the other tank inhabitants and they will also rapidly move in to clean up any mortalities you may experience. If you have limited foods available day to day you can supplement their feeds with any meaty foods, pellet foods or flake foods. The key is to ensure they have a variety of options. Bumblebee Snails are also known amongst reefers for controlling Vermetid Worm populations. Large tanks with large numbers of these worms will need large numbers in order to be effective.
Compatibility
Bumblebee Snails are a coral safe species meaning that they will not attempt to eat corals so long as they have plenty of other food options. If food is scarce there is a chance they could eat sessile invertebrates such as Tube Worms. They maintain a small size which makes them fantastic at getting into all of the cracks and crevices and giving your rockwork a really great clean up without destroying coral placements and rockscapes. These snails are compatible with all active reef safe fish but it is important to remember that they are the natural prey of snail eating species such as Puffers, Triggers. If you wish to keep this species with hermit crabs to ensure there are plenty of spare shells available for the crab to move into to avoid these snails from falling victim to them.
