Marginella snails are snail predators?

[DevilDuck]

Marginella snails are act pretty much like nano sized Narssarius snails. They hide buried in the sand and pop out when they detect food.

 

I believe these snails prey on other snails that are equal or smaller size. On several occasions I've seen them carrying away my dwarf cerith snails. 

Their "foot" would get extremely long, 3x-4x their shell length, and would have one of the ceriths trapped in it. They would then drag the cerith back under the sand.

All of my dwarf ceriths are gone save 1 or 2 jumbo sized ones. Since introducing these snails, I noticed that I no longer see stomatella snails in the display. I believe they have eaten all of them as well.

 

Normal size snails such as astrea, trochus, turbos, money cowrie, netrite, and hermits are not harmed but very young (small) snails may also become a meal.

I'm not too upset by this since they help control the snail population, and they have some very attractive shells.

 

 

[mcarroll]

Wikipedia agrees:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginella

Quote

As is [typical for this order of snails], species in this genus are carnivorous and predatory.

😬

 

Prolly worthy of some more reading if you're interested in keeping them.  Otherwise....to the refugium!!!

[DevilDuck]

1 hour ago, mcarroll said:

Wikipedia agrees:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginella

😬

 

Prolly worthy of some more reading if you're interested in keeping them.  Otherwise....to the refugium!!!

LoL, I guess I either missed that last line in the wiki or assumed the prey would be pods and other sessile creatures instead of other snails!

 

My one dollar marginella ate ten 10 cent ceriths...

 

[Tired]

Hm, that's good to know. I was thinking of adding a marginella to my next order, but I like my stomatellas and dwarf ceriths. Particularly the stomatellas that I recently got on some rock. I like how fast they are.

[mcarroll]

Freaky fast, aren't they?!

[Tired]

They are! I picked a shell up to photograph a stomatella on it, and it went from unusually fast for a snail, to incredibly fast for a snail. I've never seen a legless animal crawl so fast. Heck, I've seen legged animals that a stomatella could handily outrun. 

 

It really is a shame nowhere sells stomatellas on purpose. The long antennae are cute, the speed is interesting, and their little shells are neat. I can see the difficulties involved in catching them unharmed, even just out of a tank, so I see why they aren't sold. But I bet someone could figure something out. 

[Jakesaw]

I sometimes have an interest / need for snails in my tank, but I keep having flashbacks of a Freshwater Trumpet snail explosion that tookinvested a tank and started with one snail in my that came home with a fish.  The girl in the LFS told me they were good and harmless. 

 

WRONG!!!

 

Had to break down entire tank to get rid of them.   Never again... 

[DevilDuck]

25 minutes ago, Jakesaw said:

I sometimes have an interest / need for snails in my tank, but I keep having flashbacks of a Freshwater Trumpet snail explosion that tookinvested a tank and started with one snail in my that came home with a fish.  The girl in the LFS told me they were good and harmless. 

 

WRONG!!!

 

Had to break down entire tank to get rid of them.   Never again... 

I had the same thing happen to my first freshwater planted tank. At night, the surface of the substrate looked like it was alive and moving, there were so many! The tank was heavily co2 injected, so it was the only type of snail that could survive the lower pH. I just planted carpeting plants to cover the bottom so that I didn't need to see them! 

 

  

[Jakesaw]

20 minutes ago, DevilDuck said:

I had the same thing happen to my first freshwater planted tank. At night, the surface of the substrate looked like it was alive and moving,

  

We should get a class action suit against Petco / Petsmart.  I'm sure we can find lots of victims... and get our 2.00 refunded.

 

 

[Ratvan]

49 minutes ago, Jakesaw said:

I sometimes have an interest / need for snails in my tank, but I keep having flashbacks of a Freshwater Trumpet snail explosion that tookinvested a tank and started with one snail in my that came home with a fish.  The girl in the LFS told me they were good and harmless. 

 

WRONG!!!

 

Had to break down entire tank to get rid of them.   Never again... 

 

23 minutes ago, DevilDuck said:

I had the same thing happen to my first freshwater planted tank. At night, the surface of the substrate looked like it was alive and moving, there were so many! The tank was heavily co2 injected, so it was the only type of snail that could survive the lower pH. I just planted carpeting plants to cover the bottom so that I didn't need to see them! 

 

  

Had a similar experience. In the end i introduced some Assassin Snails and ended up having so many I was selling them back to the LFS. Was a fun tank but looked horrendous 

[Jakesaw]

28 minutes ago, Ratvan said:

 

Had a similar experience. In the end i introduced some Assassin Snails and ended up having so many I was selling them back to the LFS. Was a fun tank but looked horrendous 

Just wrong!!!

 

I settled on a single Nerrite snail in my FW non planted tank eventually, but the experience is always at the front of my aquarium mind whenever I hear the word snail. 

 

And when I bought any FW plants from a local seller, first thing I did was look for any sign of a snail. 

[mcarroll]

7 hours ago, Jakesaw said:

Had to break down entire tank to get rid of them.   Never again... 

Free help!   Should be right up your budget-oriented alley! 😉 

 

To each their own of course, but Trumpet snails are fine IMO.  

 

And there are various fish and snail "countermeasures" if you felt like they weren't fine....so they should be a "thread of lowest intensity" at worst.  

 

Assassin snails are new to the hobby (er...I am "old to it") so I don't now how they work, but sound like they might be an inadequate control.  I used loaches for control in my tanks back in the day (haven't had a planted tank in a long time 😢)....one loach was usually enough.  Aside from that control I just grew so many plants that I didn't notice anything about my Trumpet snails EXCEPT how clean they kept the tank.....didn't need to scrap glass much.  🙂  I definitely appreciated the free help!

 

Snails that were "for sale" back then usually cost more than the fish I was keeping!!  And most freshwater snails were really big back then too, so inappropriate....apple snails, or *sometimes* huge mystery snails were all there was.  Otherwise it was Ramshorn, Trumpet and "pond snails" as we called em...the little football-shaped ones.  All the "pest" snails.  I actually liked em all back then.....but trumpets were considered the best of the three.  I think they ate less plant material than the other two.)

[Tired]

Trumpets are harmless, just not pretty in large numbers. Nice to have them move the substrate a little. 

 

Assassins will slowly reduce the numbers of other snails in the tank, though don't tend to remove other species entirely unless you get a bunch of assassins. They breed, but very slowly- you start out with a couple, and in a year or two you might have half a dozen. They'll eat fish food when snails get a bit more scarce, and some people think they might be a threat to young shrimp. They're pretty, too, kinda like a bumblebee snail. Nice to look in the tank and occasionally notice them going about their business.