Snail ID help, please?

[mouserusker]

It's about 1 inch long, maybe a little larger. The shell is mostly brown, and it looks like maybe some kind of conch?

 

[Elysia]

As you probably know, we have a resident expert here on snails. So I would DO NOTHING to this snail until you get his proper ID. Do you have any idea where this snail might have come from?
To my very novice eyes, it appears as though it could be a horse conch, Pleuroploca gigantea. HOWEVER I am not an expert and I would suggest that you do nothing to the snail in question until you hear from the experts. (They can grow very large and are not considered reef safe.)

 

[mouserusker]

He was in my reef tank when it was given to me almost four months ago, and had been for quite some time. I've never seen him bother anything, and "doing" anything to him wasn't really on my mind, Unless someone on here tells he he eats aquarium glass and poops toxic laser beams, he's prolly going to stay in my reef.

I was hoping for a positive ID so I can formally add him to my "Saltwater Aquarium Species List".

 

[Letmegrow]

I think is a whelk of some sort.

I don't know the species, but of that shape they are commonly snail eaters.

 

[mouserusker]

I did a Google image search, and it looks a lot like a horse conch.
I searched for "whelk" and "red whelk", and it's not a red whelk, but searching for just "whelk" yielded too many results.
Who is this "resident snail expert"?
Also, what if it is a horse conch? It's clearly not something that can spend it's entire life in a home reef aquarium, as it would reach an adult size of approximately 24 inches. It's alive and growing, so it must be eating; but I haven't seen any damage to my reef.

 

[pagojoe]

Sorry to be slow to respond, but I've been (ahem..) fishing the last few days. Yes, it's in the Horse Conch family, and is a mollusc eater. It's either Latirus polygonus or Latirus barclayi, and although my name is Barclay, it wasn't named after me. Some of the experts consider L. barclayi to be a subspecies of Latirus polygonus.

http://www.gastropods.com/6/Shell_3346.shtml

Cheers,



Don

 

[noahm]

Nice gar! Not much fight in em. They are just designed to go forward fast and/or hover.

 

[mouserusker]

Thanks!

Nice fish! Gar, right? In my 25 years in Northern Michigan, I've seen one gar swimming in the wild. Darn thing wouldn't bite, and I threw everything I had at him.

About my snail: thankee kindly. So basically, this conch has been and will always be eating my other snails? And if I were to want to keep any clams or scallops, he would eat these also... and he may grow rather large... hmm...

It's so cool that of all the snails that look so much like this one, you nailed it. I was trying to explain to my GF why you are The Man when it comes to snails, but your "Occupation" listed is rather cryptic. So, I was wondering: what is it that you do?

 

[Letmegrow]

I was half right !

I find them all the time in large Caribbean snail shipments.

 

[BlastoEric1589]

+1 for pooping laser beams

 

[Letmegrow]

+1 for post padding.
Don't make it so obvious duder.