Anyone Know Anything About Olive Snails?

[Tennyson]

I saw Olive Snails in the fish store adn was wondering if they were reef safe and what do they eat? Are they similar to Nassarius Snails? Which is better?

Thanks

[Fischer's Angel]

Do you have a picture of it? If they are Oliva sp. then to answer your question, they are carniverous, feeding on small crustaceans. True olives are cylindrical, 1/2-2 inches in length, with glossy finish and usually marked attractively.
I have kept olives in aquaria - they are nocturnal, burying in the sand by day, coming out to feed at night, although after being in aquarium for awhile they do come out while the lights are on if they smell food in the water.
To answer your question, it depends on how you define "reef safe" - they probably won't bother your corals,anemones and such, but you can kiss any ornamental shrimps goodbye!
They do scavenge somewhat like Nassarius, but in my opinion, Nassarius are the far better choice, being strict scavengers they are not likely to cause harm to anything else in your tank.
Hope this was somewhat helpful for you!!!

[pagojoe]

I had always heard that olive snails were scavengers. But, I learned after keeping a few species that they will happily kill other animals in the tank. They kill them by grabbing them with their pseudopodia, the front part of the foot, and stuffing them into the "pouch" formed by the slit down the bottom of the foot. The animals are anaesthetized and then suffocated if they don't escape quickly, then eaten by the olive. They are beautiful, and would make a nice animals for a species tank, but I don't think you want one as part of a cleanup crew.

Mine preferred live conch snails, but didn't limit their diets to those species.

Cheers,



Don

[Fischer's Angel]

Hey pagojoe - Just curious, do you know what species your olives were, and were you able to get them to take other foods while in captivity? Mine were O.Paxilla I believe and they ate all kinds of meaty food like sliced fish and mussel,even coming out during the day if I put food in the tank.
Neat that yours would go after conchs, i kept mine with assorted other mollusks including nerites,ceriths,cowries, but he never seemed to bother them - but put a shrimp or crab in the tank and watch out!
Have any other neat mollusk pets?

[pagojoe]

Hi Fischer's Angel,

I kept several species at different times, including Oliva paxillus (now considered by some to be a synonym of O. nitidula...?), but I never saw them exhibit the super-predator behavior that I saw in other species. The most aggressive ones were Oliva sericea and Oliva miniacea, and I believe the Florida/Caribbean Oliva sayana behaves in much the same way. Oliva amethystina were also active hunters, as were Oliva caerulea, but I never saw them tackle snails bigger than they were. Same goes for Oliva carneola. O. nitidula (paxilla/paxillus) was the most reclusive of all the olive snails I kept, although any of them might disappear for weeks at a time. All of them would scavenge to some degree, and were attracted to dead fish or shrimp, but O. sericea and O. miniacea seemed to prefer live prey.

And yes, I kept lots of different snails, including about 35 different species of cone snails, but I never had a lot of luck, long term, with the worm eaters. Of course, they were in the tank with mollusc eaters, so I don't know that they had a very good chance at becoming long-term residents. The fish-eating cones and the molluscivores seemed to thrive, though.

Cheers,



Don