Preditory Snail ID

I'm not sure if this guy hitched with some live rock or was mixed in with some Turbos, but he blended in until I seen him eating an Astrea snail.
He's aboout 2-1/4" long and has a snout.






Come on Casey!:

 

Do I get a shirt for stumping the panel Casey?:LolLolLol

 

OK, i do not know what type of snail this is, but i had 4 (2 in my 20 gallon and 2 in the 55). One day i saw one of these eat a nerite snail, it sucked it up). So i was like tough luck i guess for the nerite snail...But then just yesterday i saw it had a shell in its mouth. Just below where this was going on, there was a blue leg hermit hiding/surviving the encounter. He was missing two legs.. So i when in therein full scuba gear and took the blue leg hermits shell from this snail and gave it back. The hermit crawled into his shell quickly. I then got the two snail that look just like your in my 20 gallon and then went down stairs and fished out the ones in the 55 gallon, i put them in a cup. I then added some water and hit 5 minutes o nteh microwave, place the cup inside place the cover over the cup and hit start. a few minutes later i heard a poping sound and then beep beep, times up. the snails were cooked...I tooked them out of their shells and placed the shells back into the tanks...

I hope you do something similar unless you want your other stuff dead. They might also have like a spear looking thing as i ahve been told. Ihave also been told they are a type of conch shell. hope this helps...

 

I'm pretty careful with snails, if they're predatory they can be venomous!

 

No tee shirt, you didn't stump the ENTIRE panel. ;D It's a muricid, Mancinella mancinella, sometimes called a Yellow Mouthed Drupe. It's widespread across the Indo-Pacific, and as you noticed, it eats other snails. They don't have spears or harpoons, as only the cone snails have those, and are harmless to humans. They are, however, very effective mollusc predators. It will probably continue to eat your snails if you leave it in the tank, but then again, it's a pretty cool snail, so you might just want to buy feeder snails for it...or not.

Mancinella mancinella

Cheers,


Don

 

John buy feeder snails. That gives me a giggle!!!!! If he fed this snail all his snails he wouldn't have any to sell to me!!!!

 

A welk of some sort. Either make him your pet, save your other snails, or have a very small conch fritter. ;]