What kind of snail is this?

[Animagus]

I was under the assumption that it was a Trochus snail, but somebody just told me different. (Turbo) The flesh is black if that makes a difference and I've had it for at least 3 or 4 years.

 

[DivingTheWorld]

Looks like a Turbo to me. How big is it? Turbos can grow large, Trochus are small.

 

[SeaCucumberFan]

How vig is it? I think turbo

 

[Animagus]

It's a little bit smaller than a golf ball.

 

[SeaCucumberFan]

Turbo

 

[pagojoe]

It's Cittarium pica, West Indian Top Shell.

http://www.gastropods.com/4/Shell_24.shtml

 

[Animagus]

So definitely not a "Turbo" snail, correct? More along the lines of a Trochus? Are these fairly common in the hobby or did I score here? I have had the snail for along time and this thing is an absolute algae eating machine. When I added a second one to the tank I'm pretty sure they may have spawned too. It wasn't very long after that I started seeing these tiny snails crawling on the glass.



Thank you for the ID btw.

 

[ThRoewer]

Hard to tell what snail it is without also seeing the lid.
I have a bunch of turbo snails in my system and quite literally thousands of these little guys. At night everything is covered with them.
Though I'm not sure if they are turbo snail babies or rather a different species of mini snails as I've never noticed them growing much larger. Also, quite a few have something that looks like a "Siamese twin" attached to their shell.
That said, I recently found some larger baby snails in my refugium that look very much like small turbo snails ...

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

 

[pagojoe]

No prob. The little snails are Collonistas, or closely-related species in the same subfamily. The big snail in your original post kind of falls in between the standard Trochus and Turbo snails, but is placed in the Turbo family even though the operculum is more like a Trochus. They do eat a lot of algae, and grow to over 5 inches.

Cheers,



Don

 

[Animagus]

Ok thanks.