Zoa Eating Tulip snails!

[geekdafied]

I found a baby or what appeared to be a baby tulip snail in my tank. I know tulip snails eat other snails, and since there were no snails, only a few abalones in that tank, I let them be. 2 days later, I caught one of them munching on a zoa. I pulled the rock out to verify it, and low an behold, found another one on the rock right by it. These guys are tiny and unnoticible.



Pic with a dew can for reference so you can see how small they are.

[wastemanagement]

wow they are small good spot

[Camilsky]

Thanks for hint Geek!

[geekdafied]

Those are nasty lil buggers, they tried to munch on my fingers when I was taking that photo.

[baugherb]

Man they are small.... A finger buffett...

[pagojoe]

Hey guys,

These aren't baby Tulip Snails. I can't tell without a view of the aperture, but those are either miter snails, which eat worms, or columbellids, which include the so-called "strombus grazers" or Dove Shells, and in either case, they appear to be adults. Neither of these will eat zoanthids, and neither should be much of a problem in your aquarium. I'll be back home in a couple of days, and may be able to ID them without apertural photos, but it always helps if you can get a photo of the shell's aperture with the animal withdrawn.

Cheers,


Don

[omard]

Want to get rid of small snails?

Get a wrasse.

Used to have hundreds in tank...have not seen one for longest time since wrasses arrived.

[geekdafied]

Originally Posted by pagojoe

Hey guys,

These aren't baby Tulip Snails. I can't tell without a view of the aperture, but those are either miter snails, which eat worms, or columbellids, which include the so-called "strombus grazers" or Dove Shells, and in either case, they appear to be adults. Neither of these will eat zoanthids, and neither should be much of a problem in your aquarium. I'll be back home in a couple of days, and may be able to ID them without apertural photos, but it always helps if you can get a photo of the shell's aperture with the animal withdrawn.

Cheers,


Don

I hate to break it to ya, but you would be incorrect. Miter snails dont have what would be the "stem" of a tulip like the ones I had.
Miter (or mitra) snail


Tulip snail



I found the source of them. I made a delivery a couple of weeks ago to LFS and traded a rock of zoa's for another rock they got from another supplier. The zoa rocks I took them, came strait from the wholesaler, so they never touched my tank and it was the ifrst time I dealt with that store before too. I was in there yesterday, and they had SEVERAL colonies covered in those Tulip snails. Where I have pulled out a few little snails, they had a few hundred in there. So yeah, they came from them. I talked with the owner there, and they're taking care of it.

[geekdafied]

Originally Posted by omard

Want to get rid of small snails?

Get a wrasse.

Used to have hundreds in tank...have not seen one for longest time since wrasses arrived.

Im working on that, lol... The kind I want, is hard to come across. Im looking for either Hardwicki Wrasse, Feminisis, Rubromarginatus Wrasse. I figure the next maricultured stuff I get, set some of it aside in a tank, then find the wrasse so it will have live food its acustomed too and ween on to some other source so I know it will eat other things when I dont have mariculutred stuff around.

[pagojoe]

geekdafied wrote:

"I hate to break it to ya, but you would be incorrect. Miter snails dont have what would be the "stem" of a tulip like the ones I had."

Heh, no, I'm not incorrect. I use the name "miter" loosely, since the whole group are called that by the aquarium crowd, although they are usually grouped by those who collect them as "mitriform gastropods," which includes the genus Mitra, Thala, Vexillum, and several other genera that aren't necessarily closely related. The specific miters that look like yours are mostly in the genus Vexillum, subgenus Pusia. There are a few in the genus Mitra that looks similar, though. The common name for all these is "miter" or "mitre," depending whether you are using American or British English. As I said, your snails might just as likely be columbellids rather than costellariids, though. In any case, they aren't fasciolariids, and they aren't eating your zoas.

Here is an example of one of the Pusia species that looks similar to your snails, a Mitra species with the constricted anterior tip, and a Vexillum species showing the use of the common name "Mitre":

Vexillum (Pusia) corallinum

Mitra (Nebularia) vultuosa

Vexillum (Vexillum) lyratum

Cheers,



Don