Tiny snails eating my zoas

Sorry, I'm an idiot. That was the same picture. Here is a new one.

 

Yeah, from that view it looks like if it has a siphonal canal it's very short. Wentletraps don't have one at all, but the lip is sometimes extended at the point where a siphonal canal would be, making it appear from the dorsal view that it has one. It probably is an Epitonium, but will likely be in a different subgenus from the other two specimens that were linked here (rounded ribs rather than thin blades). Only way to verify it would be to remove it and take macro photos of the ventral side in a dish of water.

Cheers,



Don

 

I'm struggling to get a good picture of the ventral side. I am still getting about a dozen or so off of the coral every day but they seem to be getting smaller. One thing that I noticed is the snails hang by a thread like spiders. I've seen them do that twice now. I don't know if that would help identify them or not.

 

Well, it might. Several families are prone to do that as juveniles, including columbellids, triphorids, eulimids (yours are none of those) and wentletraps. There are probably some others that I'm not thinking of, though. An in-focus ventral pic taken at the same distance as your dorsal pic, cropped so that it would take up more of the frame, would probably be good enough for ID verification to the family level.



Don

 

I got home last night and the zoanthid was melting away. Before I removed it, I noticed my combtooth blenny take three bites of the zoa. Could that have been the issue all along or was he just eating it because it was dead? I also noticed a small yellowish nudibrach on my glass last night. I had little spikes on its back so it may be a zoa eating nudibranch. I have never seen any of these when I dipped the coral though. If I wait a month or two before adding another zoa, will the snails and nudibranch die off? I don’t want to buy another one to watch it waste away. Thanks to everyone for their assistance on this thread. It was not a good experience but I learned a great deal.

 

Well, sorry to hear about that. The nudi's won't live that long without food, maybe a month or so. Some nudibranchs have longer life cycles, but the little zoa-eating aeolids will likely have a natural life cycle of a few months. Most adult marine snails can live at least three months without food if they've been well fed. If you want to starve the snails, it might take that long. Most likely they'll be out crawling within a couple of weeks though, and you should be able to catch them off the glass (hopefully).

Good luck,




Don