Found these little snails crawling on my clam. Pics help

[MarineGirl411]

Hi,
I am not sure what type of snails these are. They are so tiny, my camera could barely pick them up. I want to make sure these are not pyramid snails. Please if anyone knows what they are, let me know. Here are some pictures. Thank you.

 

[mbbuna]

i cant see the snails well. can you get a tighter shot

 

[MarineGirl411]

I took quite a few shots to even get them that good. =( My camera is not very good. It is pretty old. I can't get any closer or else the picture goes blurry. I can tell you though that they look like they have stripes. I'm not sure what type of snail they could be though. If you look at the top picture the snail is in the middle. You can also see some smaller ones off to the right. I don't understand why they would be crawling around on my snail unless my clam was getting ready to pass on. It detaches from the rock I placed him on quite a bit. Wondering if this is why. =/ Sorry I can't get any better pictures. I can try again.

 

[mbbuna]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11624439#post11624439 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by MarineGirl411
I took quite a few shots to even get them that good. =(

im in the same boat, i take 10 photos just to get 1 good one

i asked some else to come look and see what they can see. i dont think they are anything to worry about

 

[pagojoe]

Those are some itty bitty snails. I don't know what they'd be doing on your clam if they weren't feeding, although they may not be feeding on the clam itself. From what I can see of the color pattern, I don't think they are the pyramidellids often found on clams. I'd figure they were all the same species, and it may be my perspective, but it looks like more than one species of baby snail. If I blur my eyes just right, one of the snails looks like a juvenile Engina species, which is a worm eater or it may feed on other tiny molluscs (see the one with a light band in the middle, and two darker bands above and below it?). At least one of the others looks like a tiny turrid, maybe Philbertia barnardi. If you are looking at only the upper whorls, as in, a small juvenile, you won't see the regular patterning of brown and white. It just looks like scattered brown spots on a white shell. They presumably feed on worms, also. Here are some pics of adults. The ones labelled "Don Barclay" are pics I took, including the live animal photo. The adults are about 5 or 6mm long:

http://www.gastropods.com/0/Shell_18630.html

You would probably have to get some pics under higher magnification to get a positive ID on them. I used to cheat by using a little fixed-focus magnifier, and then shooting with my camera zoomed all the way in (using optical zoom only). It actually worked better than trying to take pics through a scope.

Like Chris says, I doubt the snails are a threat to your clam.

Cheers,



Don

 

[rwbogard]

I've never observed snails such as these feeding on clams, but thats some good insight pagojoe.

 

[skinz78]

I know there are thousands of types of pyramid snails. Them don't look like any I have seen. I would just keep a watch on them and see what they do. But don't get too freaked out yet.