Snail on my snail

[slfcaptain]

Anyone know what this white snail like thing is on my dwarf ceriths?





steve

 

[Surfnut]

It's another Cerith: Just younger. aka baby Cerith

 

[Kremlin]

It is a pyramidellid snail. A small white snail that sucks the blood of the snail until the snail dies. Take it out!

 

[ReefApprentice]

It is a pyramid snail. A small white snail that sucks the blood of the snail until the snail dies. Take it out!

+1 Remove it ASAP! They usually go for clams and snails. Some info: http://www.reefpestsolutions.com/#!pyramid-snails/c1ds1

 

[slfcaptain]

Grrr.

Thou shalt not eat my snails!!!

Unless you provide humor like the hermits. I let them slide.

Thought I was a proud grandpa snail. I'll have to hunt him down. I think I have others too.

steve

 

[Surfnut]

I stand corrected. It looks exactly like the cerith it's on to me: save for the size and color.

 

[frisbee]

It could be a baby cerith snail, but I'm a little skeptical. If your not cautious, sometimes these little pyramid snails can hitchhike there way into our tanks on clams & other snails. Just to be safe, I would remove it as well.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-09/jf/index.php

http://www.lionfishlair.com/hitchhiker/hitchhiker.shtml

 

[slfcaptain]

Well I am finding more and more of these little things even though I am trying to remove them. Under magnification I can see their proboscis going into the ceriths. Whats more worrisome is I see them on my tiny colonista (sp?) snails. I dont see how I could possibly get them all.

steve

 

[Snid]

Hate to say it, but you might want to remove all your snails, put them in a QT tank, and manually remove them in there. Then, maybe leave all the snails in the QT for a few weeks to see that no more of the bad guys survive. Meanwhile, keep your display tank empty of all food sources these bad guys could eat and hope that they all starve to death with their food source removed from the display tank. That's probably the best way to remove them.

 

[slfcaptain]

That would be quite the effort to remove every snail. For the time being, I will remove any pyram that I see and see how it goes. I don't plan on getting a clam and I am ok with getting new snails every now and then.

steve

 

[ReefApprentice]

If you have the room a sixline wrasse might destroy them, its usually the most "active" fish to get when you're trying to get rid of pyramids :/ .Their is other fish that will eat them but a sixline is usually the more common of these fish. But a lot of wrasses will also take them out. Other than that +1 to the Qt manual removal.
Edit: only problem I see with the manual removal is that if there's eggs in the DT, you'll have to wait till they hatch and then have the hatchlings starve before you put the snails back in.