Unknown snail

[Zakary2003]

At least three of these guys managed to hitchhike into my new nano tank on live rock. I will try to get better pictures tomorrow when the lights are back on, but they look like oyster drills to me. As far as I know, oyster drills are on the Atlantic side of FL and the rock came from the gulf side. Can anyone tell me what they are and if I need to remove them? The third one (not pictured) has bright orange coral growing on him so I hope they aren't harmful!

 

[kjkszpj9]

Looks like a whelk to me

 

[Zakary2003]

Looks like a whelk to me

Do I need to remove them?

 

[Zakary2003]

 

[F i s h y]

They do appear to be whelks and should be removed typically if so. the orange you are seeing appears to be a sponge.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

These snails looks predatory to me. The one with the whitish shell in the quote above may be a Florida Dog Winkle, Stramonita haemastoma - if so, it's a predator. The one with the sponge on the shell looks like it may be a Muricid/Murex snail to me (so it's most likely predatory too). The one in your first pic/post is likely whelk of some variety.

So, yeah, you likely want to remove all of them, because they'd likely eat any herbivorous (read: clean up crew) snails you put in the tank.

 

[Zakary2003]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

These snails looks predatory to me. The one with the whitish shell in the quote above may be a Florida Dog Winkle, Stramonita haemastoma - if so, it's a predator. The one with the sponge on the shell looks like it may be a Muricid/Murex snail to me (so it's most likely predatory too). The one in your first pic/post is likely whelk of some variety.

So, yeah, you likely want to remove all of them, because they'd likely eat any herbivorous (read: clean up crew) snails you put in the tank.

Thank you. It's a shame the orange one is also harmful. He's the only one I really don't want to part with!

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Thank you. It's a shame the orange one is also harmful. He's the only one I really don't want to part with!

If you wanted to, you could put it in your sump (if you have one) or isolate it in the tank so it can live in there without harming any other snails - you'd just have to feed it regularly (I imagine but could be wrong that it would do relatively well on sinking pellets, frozen, or even just fresh/frozen bivalve like grocery store clams or oysters).