Tiny snails eating my zoas

Thanks Incognito. I think you found the answer. They appear to be epitonium snails (wendletrap is apparently another name for them). There is almost no information on how to get rid of them so I guess I will just keep an eye on it and try to keep them off the coral.

 

Get rid of them the same way you would the sundials. They also produce a sticky egg mass. I had a sundial snail tank for a year (intentionally) when I found this guy and put him in. His appetite was HUGE.... way more destructive than a sundial.


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Incognitio

Always a wonderful you provided. Booked marked it this time. Question regarding the link, in the text it says Read morebut nothing happens with I click on the text or image. User error on my part??????

 

No..... I just haven't got that far yet *blush*

Gosh, I have so many unfinished projects. I even have new fish that I haven't taken decent pics of yet! For shame.

Your avatar is awesomeness BTW.

 

Thanks so much.

A wealth of information and some critters you rarely see or encounter, unless you know what to look for.

 

I'd be interested in seeing a larger pic of the snail. Can you just crop that pic so that it shows up with more snail in the pic and less background? It looks to be fairly well focused but when I zoom in I lose all my resolution. It looks like the snail has a siphonal canal, which would make it something other than an Epitonium, but it might just be an optical illusion. The snails in Corailline's link on Nano-Reef ("pyramid snails") are Epitonium snails. This was the first time I'd seen an Epitonium species reported to be feeding on zoanthids, since most of the reports I've seen (and all I ever collected) were associated with one anemone species or another.

Cheers,



Don

 

I'm not sure if you are referring to the snail in my link, but that one was actively siphoning zoas. I couldn't keep him fed. I sent details pics to Ron Schimek and he's the one that ID'd him as a Wentletrap.


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No, I was referring to the other link. Yours are correctly identified. I would have spent more time looking for them on zoanthids if I'd realized they parasitized them. About the only snails I ever found associated with zoanthids were various Heliacus species.

Cheers,



Don

 

Gottcha.


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This is about the best picture I can get. They are slightly bigger than a grain of sugar so it is hard to get a good picture. This is cropped from a 12 megapixel camera in macro mode.