I need Help IDing these SNAILS...? PLease

[DiverJohn101]

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone can help me ID these snails.

I've been losing my atlantic snails steadily, and today I saw my turbo snail dead and three of these guys were on him so, I don't know if its these guys or something else. What in particular will eat snails?

My inhabitants for reference:

1 - Golden Diamond Goby
1 - Engineering Goby
1 - Pink Male Anthias
2 - False Perculas
2 - blue / green chromis
1 - turbo snail (1- turbo R.I.P.)
2 - sally lightfoots
2 - small red legged hermit crabs
1 - brown bristle star
1 - sand sifting star
1 - horse shoe crab

My parameters are stable, I just had them check earlier today. I have no corals and it's a FOWLR tank.

- Salt ----------- .023
- Ammonia ---- 0
- Calcium ------ 450
- Nitrates ------ .2
- Nitrites ------- 0
- Alk ------------ 2.7

What kind of snails are these, they have a white stripe on the edge of there shell.

And here is a FTS just for fun, If any one has comments or suggestions its always appreciated.

Thanks,
DiverJohn

 

[pagojoe]

Yes, they are Thais or Stramonita or a related muricid species, although I'd need a good apertural view to have a decent shot at telling you which one. They will be predators on other molluscs.

Cheers,



Don

 

[DiverJohn101]

pagojoe,

Thanks for the info... I couldn't figure out why i was losing my snails. So, I went out and purchased another dozen yesterday. Tonight when i got home I saw 2 of those snails on top of another snail and he was getting eaten up.

Unfortunately, I think I lost at least another 2 snails, but the good news is. I yanked out those 4 hungry predator snails. Hopefully, I got all of them.

Thanks again,

DiverJohn

 

[madadi]

i got some like that on ebay and they were sold to me as turbo snails. turns out they are a whelk. most likely a juvenile crown conch, which is really no conch at all. the reason i say they are a juvenile crown conch is i ordered over 50 of them and they were in different stages of development. the older they got the more big the spines on the outside of their shells were. crazy little buggers and they ate other snails and each other like crazy!

 

[DiverJohn101]

Madadi,

Yeah.. these things are vicious... I was trying to figure out why all my snails were missing... I was so ****ed. I had some snails in there since the beginning of my tank. They were really nice purple encrusted and everything, and now just a bunch of empty shells all over the bottom. some of them are already buried... my gobies really like to turn that sand including my horse shoe.

anyways I took them out and now i'm happy my snails are having a feast on a small green algae bloom that came up.

DiverJohn