queen conch

[M2B3J]

can someone tell me what a queen conch is and a little bit about them?

[greenbean36191]

They are very large herbivorous snails that get about a foot long. They're too big for a tank. Other species like "Tongan," turtle, milk, and fighting conchs stay smaller and are a much better choice. They primarily stick to the sand, especially as adults.

[Echidna09]

It takes them a long time to grow that big, and in captivity they usually only get up to about 6 inches.

[parothead22]

The Horse Conch is the biggest of the conch species. A fighting or Queen would do fine in your tank IMO. Fighting being smaller than the Queen which can attain a foot or so in length due to Calfo and Fenner.
It is not adviseable to keep more than one in a small sized tank and mixing species is highly unsuitable as aggression will become evident more often than not!

[pagojoe]

Hmmmm, greenbean told ya correctly. They get large, and if they have enough to eat, they get large quickly. They may be stunted in a small tank, and never get as large as they would in the wild, due to a lack of food. It might be tricky to provide enough food to keep them from starving to death while starving them just enough to stunt their growth...

Horse conchs do get larger, almost twice as long, but they aren't conchs at all, they are fasciolariids, big carnivorous snails in the Tulip family. I've never seen an aggressive algae-eating conch, and had several different species in the tank at one time. Do they bite each other when they get aggressive? ;)

Cheers,



Don

[parothead22]

There is actually a picture of a Queen killing a Fighting Conch in the "Reef Invertebrates" book by Calfo and Fenner, on page 195.
Good to know pagojoe!
There is a mangrove conch which is a very aggressive Conch that will consume all of your turbo snails within a week or so...!
OUCH

[pagojoe]

For real? I don't think I have that book, although I have one with the same title, but I think a different author. Are you sure it's a Queen Conch and not a Crown Conch that is doing the killing? I never heard of a Queen Conch killing anything that wasn't a plant, unless it was a microorganism....? How was it killing the fighting conch?

Crown Conch: (not a conch, but in the whelk superfamily)

http://www.gastropods.com/0/Shell_1010.html

Queen Conch: (true conch, algae eater)

http://www.gastropods.com/7/Shell_217.html

Fighting Conch: (true conch, algae eater)

http://www.gastropods.com/9/Shell_1329.html
http://www.gastropods.com/4/Shell_214.html


Cheers,



Don

[billsreef]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10251005#post10251005 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by parothead22
There is actually a picture of a Queen killing a Fighting Conch in the "Reef Invertebrates" book by Calfo and Fenner, on page 195.


I just took a look. IMO they made an error in the caption. Simply put, Queen Conchs are dedicated herbivores without the means of killing another Conch in any manner.

The last part of that photo caption is "Be clear on species identification with conchs as some predatory species can be mistaken for reef-safe candidates. Pictured here losing it's fight to a Queen Conch (S.gigas)."

The snail apparently "winning" that fight is neither a S. gigas or S. alatus, but some other snail. It would seem to be an error in identification or possibly a simple publishing error.

[pagojoe]

Thanks for checking, Bill. I was pretty sure that was the case, since I knew Strombus gigas (or Tricornis gigas, if you prefer) lacked the means to "win its fight" with just about anything.

I suspect it was someone's mental lapse to call the predatory snail a Queen Conch, and that the scientific name was just added by someone else without that person knowing the difference in the animals. I've been guilty of the same thing, no matter how familiar I am with a particular snail.

I suppose you would have noticed if the killer snail was Melongena corona. Was it perhaps a Lightning Whelk, Busycon contrarium, or a Horse Conch, Pleuroploca papillosus? Both of these are large, and very effective predators.

http://www.gastropods.com/7/Shell_17.html
http://www.gastropods.com/9/Shell_45129.html

Cheers,



Don

[graveyardworm]

I've got two queen conchs :( sold to me incorrectly as fighting, and 3 fighting conch in my 100g lagoon tank they all seem quite happy and dont fight.

Is there a species of Queen conch which stays small, aroung 4-5 inches? Mine dont seem to be getting any larger and thats how big they are. They are serious bulldozers. Thye very closely resemble the conch's pictured at the bottom of this page. http://www.gastropods.com/7/Shell_217.html

Here's a couple pics of mine

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/conch205-10-06.jpg
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/conch05-10-06.jpg

[pagojoe]

Yup, that one in the pic is a juvenile, and has a juvenile lip. Once the lip flares, the conch is reaching adulthood, and it will only thicken the shell and will stop adding whorls and length after that point. Most of the larger snails in this family (or at least the ones I've fooled with) reach adulthood in two or three years, and I believe the conch farmers claim three to five years for this species, although one source said two to three. Time to sexual maturity varies by water temperature with many snails, and the same may apply to Strombus gigas (I'm sure there's a conch farmer on this list that may correct, or verify the info?). It would probably be hard to grow enough macroalgae in an aquarium for these guys to reach optimum growth rates, but I suppose you might supplement their diet.

I've never tried to feed conchs, but maybe you do, David? Bill Gilly at Hopkins Marine Station kept a bunch of Strombus luhuanus for a while, and they ate macroalgae that was collected in Monterey Bay and dropped in the tank. You could actually see the snails tugging on it. Strombus gigas might behave similarly?




Don

[billsreef]

The first time I got in small aquacultured queen conch, I placed them in my chaet. growing tank figuring the bright lighting would keep the diatoms in the sand growing fast enough to support them till sold. At the same time, my chaet. seemed to stall out. Then I saw one sucking down a strand of chaet. like spaghetti :eek2:

BTW the alleged killer snail from the above mentioned photo was lacking any sort of knubs or spikes on the whorls, so I think it was something other than the ones Don mentioned. However, there was too much epithytic growth on the shell to ID it beyond knowing a few obvious characteristics where missing for it to be what the caption claimed.

[pagojoe]

Ah, good info. My blind-guessing ability isn't doing too well on ID'ing the killer snail I see... :) I'm assuming it was a Florida/Caribbean snail, which may be totally wrong. I'll make one more guess though. Some of the Melongena species are smoothish, so that's a possibility, but when you say "smooth" it makes me think it's probably a Tulip snail, Fasciolaria tulipa. They get fairly large, are widespread, and are well-known killers. Closer?

http://www.gastropods.com/0/Shell_940.html

And to answer David's question, no, I don't think there is any subspecies of Strombus gigas that stays that small. Adult individuals have been found that were only about six inches long, but that is uncommon, and would be a true dwarf at that size.

Cheers,



Don

[billsreef]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10257625#post10257625 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by pagojoe
Ah, good info. My blind-guessing ability isn't doing too well on ID'ing the killer snail I see... :) I'm assuming it was a Florida/Caribbean snail, which may be totally wrong. I'll make one more guess though. Some of the Melongena species are smoothish, so that's a possibility, but when you say "smooth" it makes me think it's probably a Tulip snail, Fasciolaria tulipa. They get fairly large, are widespread, and are well-known killers. Closer?


Getting closer. I'm thinking Melongena melongena (http://www.gastropods.com/1/Shell_1011.html), the ones with smooth whorls are very close in shape to the snail in the photo and come from the Tropical West Atlantic as well.

[parothead22]

Very good guys! Learning about Conch's! Good to know...always learning and willing to as well!
Thanks fellow reefers!

[pagojoe]

Well, thanks for pointing out the info in the book, parothead. Can't fault a guy for believing what he reads is true, especially from an authoritative source. Almost all of the reef references have identification errors, and probably ALL of them do. I mark corrections in the books as I find the errors. Even if you know exactly what something is, it's easy enough to say "Queen" when you mean "King" or something like that. If it gets through the proofreading, you're stuck with it.

I think most of the problem is in the usage of common names, since there are snails from at least 3 different families that are called "conchs," and two of those are predatory families.

Thanks to Bill, too, for helping us resolve this.

Cheers,



Don