I have never owned a clam but last night Lindsay showed me w/ excitement 3 small guys that looked a lot like pyramid snails. I will remove them today if I see them and I read there is a snail eating pyramid snail?
Just wondering if anyone has a background on them b/c I am very confused on how they entered my tank, and now need some suggestions on how to remove them from the tank if there are a lot?
Thank you guys!
u may have breeding snails if not it might be time for a 6 line
lots of possibilities for how they got there. got a pic? they are about 1/4 inch long. do yourself a favor and contact chris&barb for the best info. ento reefer had them and got rid of them. i have them right now, so far found on 3 different clams out of 10. treatment isn’t hard, just part of the general routine for 4-6 weeks.
here’s a few pix of the dead bstrds, positively id’d. they are most active at night
I used to have a healthy population of little cerith style snails like those in all the tanks. but ive never had any clams. they seemed benign. just littler cleaners. But chris and barb pointed out some species feast on clams. i guess there are many types that look about alike. i would say if you have no clams, no problem. and if you do, well, they may not all be bad. but the problem is they are so hard to tell apart. so good luck with future course of action.
I would suppose, if they were only clam predatory for food, a tank without clams would starve them out.
If you can get a few clear closeup photos of the pointy end of the shell i can tell you if they are pyrams or not. Just an FYI, there are over 8000 or 9000 species of Pyramidellidea snails and they are all predatory.
What you have may not even be pyrams though. There is another type of snail (Rissoids) that looks almost exactly like them. Rissoids are harmless grazers and are nothing to worry about.
used to have a healthy population of little cerith style snails like those in all the tanks. but ive never had any clams. they seemed benign. just littler cleaners.
those are probably similar to 2-3 thousand snails i have Ken. i also believe they are some sort of Cerith and are sold as dwarf or mexican ceriths sometimes online. they would be all over my clams. you wouldnt see them until the mantles retracted then you would see a dozen or so nestled right up underneath towards the opening. never bothered my clams, kept em shiney clean!! the shell shape is identical to the pics above, but the coloration for the “good guys” that i have is black. although i curse the little SOBS on a daily basis for getting into places they dont belong, i cant imagine what i would do without them. everyone should have a couple thousand snails in their tanks ;D
Shawn, your ceriths are larger, like 1/2 to 3/4 inch long. the sand bed snails i had or still have are 2-3 mm max. little white long pointy snail shells. I have no clams for them to feed on, so they must be algae eaters. Like Chis says, there are zillions of variations, and only a few that are clam-ate-o’s .