"Snail eating" Pyramidellidae snails

[brandonberry]

I was wondering if anyone else had encountered these. They do not seem to bother my clams. I've had them for about 2-3 months now and check my clams regularly for them. Every Astrea snail and nerite snail I have had them on it. I tryed for several weeks to pull my snails out every day or 2 and remove these and then treturn the snail to my aquarium. This did not seem to work. Even after weeks ofdoing this I would still find 5-10 snails each time. Yesterday I started removing all my snails, that have not already been killed, scrubing their shells and placing them in a seperate tank.

 

[barjam]

I have, and every time my hand is in the tank I grab all of the asterias and scrape them off.... don't have nearly as many as you do though.

 

[brandonberry]

I'd say it is good to hear that someone else is familiar with these, but I wouldn't wish them on anyone. Before I had them, I had all kinds of neat snails. They wiped out about 80% of my snails before I new what was going on. Now that I think about it, now would be a good time to go check to see if more snails have come out. Gotta go.

 

[Anonymous]

I had them once. Just removed every snail into a small container and scrubbed off the entire shell with a toothbrush every day. It was only a 30 gallon tank though. :?

Best of luck.

 

[Anonymous]

They *do* kill clams, just not right away. I lost half a dozen T. clams to them, but one was managed to survive for about 5 yrs.

The main issue is that their eggs are very hard to see, look like jello. When you remove the adults, and not scrap off the egg mass, a few days later, the baby ones will hatched, and the cycle just go around.

I used to save these snails as I remove them in a vial. I throw most of them away after a while. I think if I did collect all of them in a jar, it will be enough to fill out a soda can 8O .

Good luck.

 

[brandonberry]

I know that there is a related species of these that attack clams, but I don't think this particular species does. I have yet to find a single one on any of my 3 clams, yet every Astrea and nerite snail was covered with them. Have you actually seen a species that attacks both snails and clams?

 

[Anonymous]

AFAICT, they are the same type of snail on both the clam and snail. The way to verify it is to move them from the clam and see if they will take the snail as a host, and vice versa. I just don't want to do this since my tank is kind of large to keep track of them.

The adult of these pest are not very mobile, so maybe that's why they did not "migrate" to you clam yet. That, or they hide too well for you to spot. Check around the spot around the mantle as well as the abysal gland.

 

[brandonberry]

I've checked the clams very thoroughly on many occasions at all different times of the day and night. Maybe they have a preference for snails and in their absence they will seek the clams. I am pretty sure I have removed all of my snails now, so I will start to check my clams more frequently to see if this is the case. I was told by a PhD in marine sciences that he thought that the species I had might be a different species. I guess we'll see if they starve without the snails or seek the clams.