Nassarius snails killing my nerites

[ethank77]

Nassarius snails killing and eating olive nerites. Twice now I have found my nassarius rolling over my other snailes and eating them. is this normal behaiver. Also if I feed them more would this stop.

[Will520]

I've had nassarius snails for years and have never seen them kill any thing. If they're eating your nerites then the olive nerites are either already dead or almost dead. How long have you had the olive nerites in your aquarium?

[Will520]

and how did you acclimate the olive nerites?

[ethank77]

this is possible pick up the nerites off of a mooring rope in the local bay. quartined for weeks before use at least 5 weeks then moved to show take to help with algae problem. may not have done great job of acclimating

[Sk8r]

ON THE OTHER hand...are you sure you have nassarius? Somebody on Ebay was selling dog whelks as nassarius---probably not intentionally deceptive, but bad news for other snails.

[Will520]

but do dog whelk's burrow in the sand? Nassarius snails spend almost the entire day in the sandbed unless they smell food.

[ethank77]

well the up spouts on these are white I understand that the dog welks have spots on thier up spouts

[ethank77]

and stay in the substrate most of the time

[paraletho]

http://i514.photobucket.com/albums/t341/paraletho/204-Copy.jpg

Which is this Nassarius or Dog Whelk

[ethank77]

bump

[SmknReefer]

Mine is identical...nassarius and I did catch only one of them eating a small hermit crab of mine the other day. I pulled them apart...marked the hermit shell and now the hermit crab is still kicking a week later. So I don't think he was almost dead...but who knows.

[pagojoe]

Paraletho's snail is a Nassarius. It looks to be Nassarius coronatus, one of two species sold as "Tongan Nassarius" or something similar. It's not unheard of for the large Nassarius species to attack animals that have just been introduced to their tank, well acclimated or not.

Cheers,



Don