snail ID

Hey all

I bough these snails off ebay - i was meant to get turbo snails but got these instead. they don't look like turbo to me so im worried.

(please see attached pic, im at work so messing around with images and photobucket is a no go)

 

i think what you have are margarita snails
Margarites pupillus

 

Hey Mamol - thanks for the quick reply, i too thought margherita as the body is pretty much the same, its just the colouration is different. I guess i just want reassurance that its an algae eater. Strange - they have been delivered to me dry, the guy put a note on the invoice saying this much better then shipping them in water.

 

actually a lot of invert shippers will ship them dry because they tend to stay alive better, plus the weight is a lot less.

 

I have a hard time believing what sellers have to say sometimes but the pattern on these looks a lot more like what have in the picture than a margarita.
Nerite Snail, Saltwater Invertebrates | Pet Solutions
Looks a bit different though than other Nerite snails listed elsewhere.

 

Hey mamol i thnk you got it! thanks!

 

Yeah, the "Nerite" on the Pet Solutions site is a Tegula species, as is yours, Phoenix, but it may or may not be the same species. There are about 5 or 6 species that live more or less together on the Pacific coast of the Americas, and I think yours is one of those. The problem with finding matching pics is that sometimes the only pic you can find of a species is one that is so eroded it no longer shows the pattern, while other pics are exceptionally clean and uneroded and consequently don't look much like the average snail of that species. Margarites pupillus occurs alongside these, but that species never has the stripes on the shell and is silvery white or pink.

Margarites pupillus

It's probably Tegula rugosa, but there are several similar species for which I can't find pics on the net, so it could be one of those as well. In any case it should be one of the western American species, and a decent algae eater, if it doesn't succumb to the warmer water of a reef tank and die a premature death. Here's a fairly unexceptional pic of T. rugosa:

Tegula (Chlorostoma) rugosa

Cheers,



Don

 

Thanks for definately confirming that they were a species of nerite - however they are all dead and are currently hermit crab food. Unfortunately i can no longer contact the seller also as ebay has suspended their account??

 

wow, thats some good customer service. Were they dead when you got them, or die with acclimation? This brings a question to my mind... I have heard that snails are very fragile when it comes to acclimation... so, if they were shipped dry, how could you properly acclimate them with nothing to acclimate them FROM....

 

Hmm, they should have been shipped...damp, not dry. The best way is to ship them wrapped in wet cloth. They aren't really nerites, they are turbinids, but they have an operculum almost like the trochids. True nerites are good at sealing up their shells, and can live out of water a couple of days (or longer). Turbo species are also pretty good at retaining their hydration, but trochids and Tegula species aren't, since they can't seal their shells as well. Sorry yours didn't make it, they would have likely been good algae eaters.

Cheers,



Don