WTH, Little white snails munching on my crocea???

[Garage1217]

Well I am up late and before I go to bed, I decided to take a look at the tank. Long story short, my crocea has looked a little ticked off lateley, not fully opening and closeing up on and off real fast for no reason "no change in light" and I had no idea why. So when I looked tonight at the clam, the flashlight scared it and the little mantle that was extended sucked in tight and BAM, I see about 30+ or so tiny white snails with long spiral shells all up in the cracks and creases of the clam! Some of them were 3-4mm long! They looked to be munching on the mantle area, anyone ever see these or hear of them?

I freaked, got the clam out, used tweezers and plucked every single one off, there were some so small I could not get them out of the cracks so I blaster them with RO water and shot them out of the cracks. Hope I did not tick off my clam to much. Anyways has me very worried. Hope I get some feedback on this!!!!

[Garage1217]

CRAP. Looks like I have pyramidellid snails.. Little bastages. This is going to be fun getting rid of them. They had to have come in on another crocea I bought a month ago that lasted only a week & a half "my current crocea is going on 7 months with no issues until now"..

Oh man this ticks me off big time.

http://www.reefland.com/rho/2006/05/...lid_snails.php

[Garage1217]

These little guys are vicious... After the clam being back in the tank for about 5 minutes, I found 2 more climbing up the side. Got them right out.

Looks like I am going to be on an all night clam watch grrr..... Took pics of them on the clam and also in the dish I am keeping them in.

They definitly came from the crocea I bought last month, I always wondered why it would never really fully extend when I bought it. Now I know. I went outside were I put the shell, and there were a few on the bottom of the dry tank that I put the remains on, about 2-3 inches away like they tried to crawl a bit. And some still around the folds. This was the only item I had bought a month and a half or more prior and my original crocea was rockin. Definitly going to alert the store I bought it from, they probably had no idea as some of these guys were like .25mm in length. You would never see them under a partially extended mantle.

[drawman]

Good luck with your hunt. I've had similar looking snails in my reef tank but I don't have any clams. I'm going to try and identify mine now.

[jpeggerling]

Thats not a good sign. I had the same problem a while back ago. Snail are scavenger and they eat stuff that is dying. My clam looked prefectly health and then after a couple day after the snail were on it I lost it. The clam could be rotting on the inside and putting off a smell that is attracting the snail. Good luck.

[kirstenk]

Crocea clams can be dipped in RO water. The dip will kill the snails. Use a toothbrush after the dip to scrub away others. Especially up near the mantle where any might have hidden when the clam closed for the dip.

I had clams with pinched mantle. I dipped them appx. every 3 days for up to 15 minutes. They did fine. HTH

[kirstenk]

PS.......dip all new clams in RO and QT if ya can.

Everything we put in our tanks we need to inspect and dip and QT if possible. I could have had many less headaches if I had been more diligent about these practices.

[jasonh]

Ugh, I really need to get a full-time QT up and running. I have a hospital tank set up for a fish currently, but I've never QT'd anything after purchase. I guess I'm too impatient Not to mention, it's tough to have an empty tank just sitting there with water in it waiting for a purchase. I'd much rather have another full reef tank

Sorry to hear about the snails. Hope a fw dip can take care of them. I seem to remember reading about a fish or invert that eats the pyramid snails....I just can't remember.

[Garage1217]

Well good news, I only found 1 more micro tiny one at 10am, clam is back to it's 100% happy expanded self! Frilly and beautiful. Going to check it daily from now on for at least a month.

For jpeggerling, They attack perfectly healthy clams and kill them in short order after research. This crocea was 100% loving life, then just after the first was killed by the snails, it started looking pinched.

I usually dip everything, with the clam, I just did not think of dangerous clam eating snails *LOL*



Here is info on it take from the link above....

These little snails will seek out their hosts, either larger snails, tridacnid clams, or even feather duster worms. The snails will attach to the host where they can conveniently reach the soft tissues and then proceed to dine on the blood of their host. One or two small parasitic snails on large clam cause an insignificant amount of damage and does not constitute a serious problem for a clam or snail. In the closed confines of the reef tank, however, one or two of these pests can soon reproduce many hundreds of offspring, and the snail populations can reach sufficiently high numbers to kill their hosts. These pests have to be manually removed, and with diligence they may be eradicated from a system. The eradication effort may take time, effort, and a lot of work.