Snail ID please

P

Puffer22

New member
ok so we've been having problems for at least a year with losing snails and hermits and had no idea what was causing it. tonight for the first time, we saw this guy and think it's a whelk, which i've read could be the culprit. we have never ever seen this guy and he's a good 2 1/2" long. last week we even reaquascaped and didn't see him. i know they burrow in the sand too. he eluded capture tonight because we couldn't id in time to get him when he was out. are our conclusions about this correct? i want to make sure that's what he is before he gets pitched. nobody would actually want this thing, would they?


WHELK??
 
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It's a predatory snail, but may be a muricid rather than a whelk. It's easier to ID them if I can see an apertural view. It's probably not a sand hider, since most of those don't have very many encrustations on the shell. It probably hides under your rocks instead.

Cheers,




Don
 
just wondering if he could have hidden in the sand in the past... no idea how he even got in the tank. we regularly check the tank, day and night. tried to pluck him off the back of the tank and he fell, moved quick and burrowed under the rock in the back. is it likely we'll see him again? him being that big leads me to believe he's been there a while, but never seen. is there a way to catch him?
assumed he was a whelk due to the picture on melev's. he's got the same pattern on his body and the long nose.

melev's id

at any rate, we're taking him out asap and he's getting pitched. nobody actually wants these, do they?

are they night snails only?

sorry to ask so much, but i want to know what i'm dealing with here to give me the most opportunity to catch it. i'd like to actually have more than 1-2 snails at a time without losing a bunch. he's had a very costly feast... when they started disappearing... maybe 30 snails, 20 of them being very very large, probably 3" across or so. we've already lost one of our two red footed snails that we got only 3 days ago. :(
 
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Right, that's a true whelk on Marc's site, a Cantharus species. That species maxes out at a little over an inch in length. I think yours is a variation of Stramonita haemastoma, a wide-spread muricid that gets fairly large. It is more likely to be active at night, so that may be your best chance to catch it.

If it's the species I'm thinking it is, this form is common on rocks from Florida to Texas, and is one of the species that casual beach walkers are likely to take home and drop in their tanks. Dunno how yours got there, but if you don't spend much time looking at your tank at night, it might have been easy to miss it.

http://www.gastropods.com/4/Shell_1904.html

Cheers,



Don
 
i actually check out the tank about every night. :) somehow he's evaded both of us. thank you for the help. he'll be on the way out very soon. (provided he shows himself again)
 
The bad ones will kill all the other snails in your tank, and may even kill your clams, including tridacnids. These are mostly the larger ones, around an inch long. There are some other snails in the superfamily Buccinoidea, as well as some in the family Muricidae, which aren't true whelks but may also kill other molluscs in your aquarium.

Cheers,



Don
 
Well, it isn't the Gulf Coast snail I thought it was, but it is a murex. I only have the net here at work, and no access to my references, but I'll try to verify the ID when I get home. The one it looks most like, but probably isn't, since it's longer then the max size fore the species, is Ergalatax margariticola.

http://www.gastropods.com/1/Shell_1131.html

It's going to be a tropical species. If it's Indo-Pacific, I'll probably be able to find it.

Good ID pic, by the way. Cheers,



Don
 
OK, I've been through all my Indo-Pacific and Caribbean references, along with my limited Panamic references, without finding a satisfactory match for your snail. If it's not an aberrant Indo-Pacific muricid, it's most likely a Baja California/Panamic snail, maybe a buccinid rather than a muricid. I can recognize a couple thousand snails instantly, but most of my knowledge is of Indo-Pacific animals. I contacted a friend who is more familiar with the shells from other areas, and he was also unable to identify it, although he did suggest it was probably either a buccinid or fasciolariid. Your snail has an odd-shaped aperture, one that is typical of a few species of Cantharus/Pollia, although some of the muricids are very similar. Most Cantharus species have an operculum that is thinner than your snail's operculum. I'm currently stumped, but I'll contact one other guy who is very knowledgeable about worldwide molluscs, and see if he recognizes it. Don't throw it away, if you aren't going to keep it send it to me and I'll try to clean up the shell and ID it. I'll be glad to pay the postage. All of the possibilities are predatory, and all of them (Cantharus, Murex, and Latirus) will eat other snails.

Hope I'll have some more info for you soon, Cheers,


Don
 
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