Has anyone seen or heard of this? Or at least stealing food from the snail?

Hehe. I read this as Mandarin-eating vermetid snails.

I'm sorry I have no answer to your question, but I'm really glad your mandarin wasn't caught in a web of snail snot.

my guess is that its taking the snails food, i doubt its eating them, it would have to chew through all of the snails coils to get to the meat.

but you know who is eating snails? my effin cleaner shrimp. he has cleaned my tank of stomatellas

I watched my mandarin go up to the snails tube, and suck out half of what was in there. tube when from entirely cream color, to half cream half clear. I have also witnessed it taking brine off them before to.

is it sucking half of the snail out, or is the snail retracting deeper into its shell. ive broken em off of rock before, and if i dont get most of the shell they will grow back

No half definitely came out. This is what made me think it was stealing food from the snail.

in the wild yes mandarin eat gasteropod which are snails but they need to be really small baby probably and tender. They not only eat copepods like most people here beleive, but after analysing the contant of the stomach of a mandarin researchers found copepods, isopods, amphypods, some type of bristle worms, and some snail yes, plus fish eggs.

They eat pretty much anything eatible that they can find! Mine is eating white worms, fish roe, hikari frozen bloodworms (he loves that!) and cyclopeeze, along with all the little critters he finds in my tank including mysis shrimps.

Mine also seem to have eated all the numerous flatworms that I had since I do not see them any longer and I had ton of them before the mandarin.