Brooklyn Johnny Posted August 6, 2003 Share Posted August 6, 2003 Well I've had the first semi-major setback with my 10 gallon nano of now about a year. I've lost two of my maximas to parasitic snails of the family pyramidellidae. Here's the details. About a month ago I was viewing the tank at night and noticed a small conical snail moving near the mantle of my squamosa clam... I immediately removed it and kept it, but didn't think too much of it, thinking that it was just one of the many conical snails... also all of the clams looked good to that point. A couple of weeks after that I noticed my blue maxima was only partly opening. I have enclosed a recent picture showing my three maximas. All of them were doing great up to that point, showing new growth (a good indicator of health espcially in clams IMO) and keeping their deep color (anoth indicator). The blue maxima was one of the newer ones, purchased December 7th of last year. I didn't think much of it, until I went away for four days and came back to a cleaned out shell. I had no diagnosis. Then about a week after that, I noticed my green maxima was not fully opening, and seemed irritated. It was not gaping, but rather just looking as they do at night, closed up a little and recessed in their shell. I kept an eye on it and it stayed that way for few days. Then after about a week of that (just this past Monday) I noticed the clam was very recessed (to the point of no return) and saw a little shell wiggling around. The clam had a lot of it's tissue gone now. I pulled the shell out immeditely and saw one of the little bast**** sucking the tissue. I cracked open the clam and found a second buried deep within the tissue, possibly what caused the death. I whipped out Knop's book out of my bookshelf and right away I positively IDed them. They list basically three ways to get rid of them... one from fish... I have a sixline wrasse but he doesn't touch them... I've heard of H. chrysus wrasses eating them, but I can't add one of those. The second is to put a UV sterilizer and wipe them out in the planktonic stage. I don't even know if they're breeding, or if they came in on a piece of something I got, which is what I assume. The third is to manually remove them by checking at night, which is what I'm doing. So far my purple maxima, which I've had since last October, is doing well, along with my squamosa. Anyway aside from that all is well in the tank, and stuff is growing so well, including my remaining clams, that I'm adding my full strength topoff kalk along with 15 mLs of B-ionic a day. I'm setting up a 65 gallon reef with a 15 gallon frag tank so as soon as that gets up I need to trim many pieces back. I'll give a full tank update soon. Anyway here are some pics... Link to comment
Brooklyn Johnny Posted August 6, 2003 Author Share Posted August 6, 2003 Here's a closeup of one... Link to comment
Brooklyn Johnny Posted August 6, 2003 Author Share Posted August 6, 2003 Here's the shell of my green max, which was doing so well and laying some new growth... Link to comment
Brooklyn Johnny Posted August 6, 2003 Author Share Posted August 6, 2003 Here is a shot of the three of them on June 24th... this is w/o flash... Link to comment
Brooklyn Johnny Posted August 6, 2003 Author Share Posted August 6, 2003 Here's a shot with flash... my purple one thanks God is doing well still, which is my oldest and fastest grower... hopefully he'll pull through and avoid attack... Link to comment
TiGs Posted August 6, 2003 Share Posted August 6, 2003 That's too bad for your lost clams. At least you found out the reason for the deaths. Those snails are small. Link to comment
Brooklyn Johnny Posted August 6, 2003 Author Share Posted August 6, 2003 Thanks Tigs... I've only lost 2... and hopefully now that I know what's up I can save the others... Yes they are small. Quote from Knop's book..."All species of the family (Pyramidellidae) comprise small snails with an overall length of a few mm only." I had always read that they were about the size of a grain of rice... and that's why I broke open the box of Rice-a-Roni... to show how close that is... I'll update on the status of the other two... so far they are fully opening and showing no ill effects... Link to comment
Brooklyn Johnny Posted August 6, 2003 Author Share Posted August 6, 2003 Here's an even more recent shot I still have sitting in my digital camera... on a positive note my stag and many others are still growing well... Link to comment
drdrew Posted August 6, 2003 Share Posted August 6, 2003 THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! i have been looking for a picture of these snails for a long time. this is a great post...it helps us to know what to look out for! you may have saved many lives.......our hero... Link to comment
tinyreef Posted August 6, 2003 Share Posted August 6, 2003 the uv sounds good but that'll also affect your feeding system setup for the corals. imo the snails almost definitely reproduced (they're hermaphrodites if i remember correctly). the unseen babies may come back and finish off the last clam. you may want to go for the quarantine tank and physically pluck off the remaining visible snails and then let the remaining snails (if any) in the display tank just starve to death being without prey. i'm pretty sure they can't alternately feed on other organisms other than the clams. (kinda like starving out ich when you rev up the temp and their life cycles) after a month you should be able to tranplant the clam back in. (assuming there wasn't further outbreaks in the Q-tank) Link to comment
Brooklyn Johnny Posted August 6, 2003 Author Share Posted August 6, 2003 According to Knop the snail goes from egg to final snail in 2 weeks. Sexual maturity is reached in 40 to 50 days, and the full life span is about four to five months. Doesn't mention if they're hermaphrodites. Plans are going through with my new tank, but this will take a while to be ready. I would not feel comfortable setting up a QT tank and having it ready for my clams so fast. I'm going to monitor them and see what happens, checking for more. I yanked the squamosa and found none, and the purple max has had his foot buried in the same spot and is immobile, but I checked him too and he was clean to what I could see. Apparently they hide just inside and around the mantle. His book mentions that their distribution overlaps that of the Tridacnids, but I'm unsure as to how long they can go on alternate food sources outside of the lymphatic fluid... Link to comment
kennerd Posted August 7, 2003 Share Posted August 7, 2003 Bummer. Also one of the reasons folks try to get their clams to attach to oyster, clam shells and then place them on the rocks, that way you can remove them for occasional inspection and snail removal without damaging them. Some very good topis can also be found in the Reef Central Tridacnid Clams and other Mollusks Forum RC "Pyramid Snail" search from that forum and search for "snails" in that forum Link to comment
OscarBeast Posted August 7, 2003 Share Posted August 7, 2003 http://www.clamsdirect.com/search/search.p...ms=pyramidellid Link to comment
Brooklyn Johnny Posted August 7, 2003 Author Share Posted August 7, 2003 Thanks for the links Oscar and Kennerd... I have read about enough on these little Bs... Quote from wetwebmedia and Anthony Calfo... There are no snails on the outside of the clam and no eggs on the bottom. I figure even just one of those snails sucking away at its insides could do it in though. Oh well... all was well last night after a few checks on my remaining two clams... Johnny Link to comment
cmoreash Posted August 8, 2003 Share Posted August 8, 2003 I've got a lot of small white snails that look kinda like those in my tank, and they seem to be reproduce pretty fast....they go on the live rock, and the glass a lot though, i have NOT seen a single one after any other snails or anything...think i have the pyramidellid beasts? Link to comment
ridetheducati Posted August 9, 2003 Share Posted August 9, 2003 Check all your regular snails (astreas, nerith,ceriths, etc) in the past I have notices pyrmidal snails attacking my golden astreas. Pyrmidals normally show their numbers well after the lights have shutdown. Wait 3 hours and conduct your inspections/removal procedures. Link to comment
cmoreash Posted August 9, 2003 Share Posted August 9, 2003 yea, these little ones are out mainly at night, they have not even went after the other snails though Link to comment
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