Is this a whelk?

[trung]

I just set up a 20L last Tuesday with 30lbs of gulf view coralline rocks and 8lbs of locally bought fiji and tonga rocks. The rocks from gulf view came with a couple of hitchhiker snails. One looks like a nassarius snail. There's two that looks like whelks but I'm not sure. I'm especially concern with the big one, around 3/4". It crawls on top of rock and just stay in one place. When I took it out of the tank to take a picture and dropped it back in, it crawled on another rock and has been there for 4 days now.

 

Does anybody know what kind of snail this is? Should I removed it? Sorry the 2nd picture is kinda out of focus (the aquaclear sponge is focused in very well though). The whole shell is covered with red and white coralline algae. Note that the body is all pink/red. The smaller snail looks similar to that one except the body is a normal brown color and it has been hanging out on the front glass.

[OscarBeast]

Looks to be a horse conch going by shape and body color, but I am not 100% sure. Horse conchs will eat ANYTHING they can catch and grow to around 2 feet. They are NOT reef safe.

[hhasty79]

Looks like a horse conch I had. I second OscarBeast's post.

 

If you get a clearer pic of it with body withdrawn (so you can see the inner bit of the shell), Dr Ron on reefcentral can probably give you a positive ID.

[trung]

Thanks oscar and heather. I did a search for horse conch in ask Dr. Ron forum and got to look at some pictures. Can't really tell if it looks like the snail I have or not. The pictured ones are not covered with coralline algae. This guy sits in the same place on the rock all day (even at night), no wonder he got so much coralline algae on him. I'll take some more pictures this evening and ask Dr. Ron. I'll update this thread when I get an answer from Dr. Ron.

 

Btw, found a tiny nudibranch with pink/red fur crawling on one of the rocks this morning. Now I got to find out if I need to evict this little guy too.

[hhasty79]

Originally posted by trung

 

Btw, found a tiny nudibranch with pink/red fur crawling on one of the rocks this morning.  Now I got to find out if I need to evict this little guy too.

 

Neat! Get a pic before you do anything drastic

[trung]

I hope I can still find that nudibranch later. The guy is so small, less than 1/4" so I don't know the pictures will turn out very well or not. From memory and Dr. Ron's article at http://www.animalnetwork.com/fish2/aqfm/19.../wb/default.asp , it looks like an aeolid. I remember it has the two oral tentacles and fury pinkish red sides with a white body. Now what exact species is still unkown after I had browse through some of the 7000 pictures at http://www.seaslug.com/illustrat.html .

If I can find it again, maybe I should pick it up with a tweezer and drop it by the rock anemone and see if it will munch the anemone. Don't see any aiptasia yet, just the one rock anemome.

[ricknbecky]

I don't know about the nudi but you little smail guy looks jusy like the evil guy who killed my dersea clam. the clam was 1.5" and the little snail was only 1 cm.

[sjpresley]

Does your snail have small nobs in a spiral pattern around the shell? I never found out exactly what mine were but by the description Dr. Ron thought it was probably a whelk, there are apparently around 10,000 sp.

 

I had a few of these guys, similar to your but with a blackish foot, that I got for free, a few months later I noticed one piggy backing an Astrea. After a few days I took it off to find a nice neat little hole drilled through the shell. I started fishing out snail shells and found about 10 more just like it.

 

My snails would also just sit in one spot for a long time, some times days, and only "hunted" at night.

[trung]

Dr. Ron answered my post on reefcentral. Here's a link for those interested: http://reefcentral.com/vbulletin/showthrea...=&postid=899108 . I have some more pictures there. He thinks the larger snail (with pictures in this thread) is a fasciolarid (Latirus genus), basically a predatory whelk. The small snail could be the same kind or different type of whelks. The larger one is pressed against a rock anemone (like he's on top of the anemone body) so maybe he found food for the next few days. The anemone tentacle is still open though but it can't retreat back to the hole because it is smushed against the rock. I'll probably toss both snails out today. Anybody looking for some possibly aiptasia-eating whelks (and whatever other inverts you may have in the tank)?

 

Dr. Ron also thinks the nudibranch is an aeolid but don't know which species with the very blury pictures that I have. Maybe I should try the dig-8 camcorder so I can zoom in better.

 

The gulf view rocks sure have a lot of lifes on there, unfortunately some are bad. I also saw some good ones too though, like 2 limpets (not keyhole), 1 chiton, 1 hermit crab, 1 turritellid snail, 1 tiny cowrie (or it could be a hermit crab in a cowrie shell, can't really tell) , some mini-brittle stars, some tiny black urchins, and lots of worms, fan worms, and christmas tree worms. Nitrite is already down to .1 ppm as of Sunday (less than a week); it was at .25ppm after 2 days. Cycling should be done this week. Trying to id all the critters and figure out what is dangerous or not will take a few more weeks.

 

Crossing my fingers but so far no mantis or aiptasia yet.