im going to get a snail for my saltwater tank. but i dont know what it eats. does eat alge or sand?do you have to buy food for it or will it find food in the tank itself?

Well isn't this tank new how old is it, if its only a few weeks old, I would say don't do it, they can die, snails need Calcium for there shell. Your Water needs to have no ammonia in it, snails can die from that......

there are many different kinds of snails, some eat algae or there are sand dwellers ??

Snails eat algae. It only grows in an established tank with sufficient lighting. You could also buy algae wafers for plecos but I am not really sure if a snail would eat them. They probably would but I would wait for other opinions.

its only a few weeks old and i actually already have it. What am i going to do. i thought it would help it cycle the tank!

Ooops... Koko, you must have replied when I was still waiting for my post to load. This is a slow computer...

Anyway, I had no idea that there were any snails that could eat stuff other than algae/wafers! Also, I agree that ammonia is very bad for snails because once I had two snails die at once and I checked my tank stats and the only thing that was not perfect was the ammonia level!

Nothing now, just keep an eye out on your levels, also I don't know if any has told you but you will need Alk and Calcium additive for this tank....most of the time they come as a combo.....

thanks koko but when i bought my sand the lady at the store said there was calcium and alk put in the sand.i really don't know if that is possible.but she may be right because the sand wasnt in a bag they sold it in tanks.they scooped it up and gave me some to put in my tan.it cost me 50 dollars for just a little.she said it was live . i really dont trust this lady at the petstore but.

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thanks koko but when i bought my sand the lady at the store said there was calcium and alk put in the sand.i really don't know if that is possible.but she may be right because the sand wasnt in a bag they sold it in tanks.they scooped it up and gave me some to put in my tan.it cost me 50 dollars for just a little.she said it was live . i really dont trust this lady at the petstore but.
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Wow....You got some live sand???? Are you sure it was live sand??? Was this sand in a tank with fish and live rock??? Did it come out of an established marine system??? How many lbs did you get for 50 bucks??? I would suggest that you stop buying things for a few days until you do some more research on this subject... Unless you received a lot of sand for 50 bucks I think this LFS is taking advantage of you!! You really only need a cup of live sand or so to add the bacteria...many reef keepers will take time and get involved with other reef tank keepers and they often will just give you a cup of live sand to seed your sand....

$50.00 Bucks would have bought 6 to 8lbs...of live rock from your lfs...I can get live rock here for about $4.50 a lb.... so it would buy me about 10lbs....the live rock would have seeded your sand and you wouldn't have had to get live sand!!!

Here is a link to an article that will help you understand some very basic things in getting started in the salt water marine tank systems....

Koko...I hope this is ok...I don't like re-inventing the wheel...and this is an article we had written and it may answer a lot of the questions and keep new people form spending lots of unnecessary dollars...

http://www.aquatic-hobby.com/index.php?showtopic=712