What is this too??

Someone gave me this and it looked too interesting to pass up. it is some kind of a snail or the like, the big difference is the spots on his shell are his mantle or part of his body that slides on the outside of his shell. If you touch or disturb him he slides all his spots off and into the shell and then the shell is just a polished white shell. trippy! Anyhoo, I think he is eating my sea fan. I need to find out if he is going to slowly eat my various corals or what. Thanks in advance.

 

looks like its a flamingo tongue snail it does eat sea fan, sea rod coral and other soft and hard corals.

 

e-ReefNews, Vol. 7, No.9 - Flamingo-Tongue Snail Devours Sea Rod Coral Polyps

Article and picture

Jim

 

It's really too bad that bugger likes to digest corals. It looks awsome!

 

I was diving in Puerto rico a few weeks ago and there were alot of these everywhere. My buddy (who was a local) would remove them from any coral and and feed them to the anemones, they seemed to love them!!!
He referred to them as ticks!! they were destroying all of the soft corals there. Id say get them out of your tank before they eat everything. They are pretty neat to look at though.

 

Those are awesome. If you can satisfy his needs, I think he is an awesome addition. ;D

 

Thanks All, great article Diver. And awesome avitar acenia i had to go back and look at my pic again to see cuz those are close. It does look awesome and my kids love it but I saw him on top of my mushroom and knocked him off cuz I knew he wasn't up there for a nap. lol if I could get him to dine on some of my more rapid reproducing corals , id say thumbs up, but not worth the risk. back to the briny he goes.