What is the name of this snail, and is it reef safe?

[Bogdan Marin]

Hello.

I received 2 days ago from a friend the snail in the photos.
I don't know it's name or of it's reef safe or not.
For the moment is on a quarantine tank.
Can you help me please?
Many thanks!

 

[badbreath]

I'm going with whelk this time...I could easily be wrong so wait for the experts to weigh in. Good luck [emoji106][emoji106]

Sent from my LG-H811 using Tapatalk

 

[AlSimmons]

It looks like some sort of Whelk to me as well, but pagojoe should be able to ID this for you.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-11/rs/index.php

 

[pagojoe]

Beautiful. Is it a Mediterranean species?

 

[pagojoe]

It looks to be a buccinid whelk, but I don't know the species. I will keep looking...

 

[Bogdan Marin]

Yes, it's Mediterranean. Thank you for the interest.

 

[pagojoe]

It's probably a Euthria cornea variant, which would have the yellow animal, but I've never seen one as ornate as yours. There are a couple on this page that look similar:

http://www.idscaro.net/sci/04_med/class/fam3/species/euthria_cornea1.htm

I'm not sure what it eats, but it should be either be a predator or scavenge on carrion. As far as whether it is reef safe, it probably wouldn't bother corals, but I'm not sure if it would eat other snails. I think I would risk it, to keep such a beautiful snail in my tank.

 

[Bogdan Marin]

You were right about the name.
I put him in my tank two weeks ago and so far he behaved well.
In that tank i have cerith snails, cowrie and a couple of bivalves but until now there are no casualties.
Thank you very much for your informations and concearn.

 

[pagojoe]

Very nice, thanks for the update.