Fish needed that will eat Vermetid Snails

[hotelbravo]

I have hundreds if not thousands of Vermetid Snails in my tank i havent really noticed until i was redoing rockwork and couldnt find a safe spot for my fingers and got to looking around and they are covering everything including the powerheads and returns. they are even in the drain hoses, skimmer neck, and sump area. these guys are EVERYWHERE!!!!


i have heard that some copperbands will eat them but not sure what else will eat them.. i have xenia i dont want eaten but if its the price i have to pay then so be it.

any suggestions???

[SaltyDoug]

Don't puffers usually eat snails?

[jraker]

I have heard that raccoon butterflies will eat anything. Puffers might also be another option.

[hotelbravo]

Just so I'm clear I am talking about the snails that live in hard calcified tubes and spew out webs to catch matter in the water column puffer fish will actually eat those?

[A sea K]

Puffers certainly have the dental hardware for the job but who knows. Came across this thread earlier today, http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1927977

[MuShu]

I have a Valentini puffer and while he ate all the little tube worms on the rocks, the vermetid snails have been multiplying.

[ThRoewer]

A Chelmon (CBB) may harass them enough to keep them from spreading into the open. Possibly there are also some wrasses, triggers, puffers or filefish that go after them, but I doubt that fish will be particularly successful in controlling them. For that you may need predatory inverts like snails, sea stars, crabs, ... something that may work in a FOWLR tank, but not so much in a reef tank with corals and inverts.

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[johnike]

I've read that Bumblebee snails eat them.

[hotelbravo]

I've read that Bumblebee snails eat them.

Interesting, my LFS has those snails in their display tank last time I was cleaning it for them they asked if I wanted them. I turned them down but maybe I should go get a bunch and try them out

[jmicky41]

My tank has/had them. Seems the population goes through boom and bust cycles. If I feed more frozen foods like Rods or Larrys the numbers increase. If more pellets and plankton are fed, the numbers wane. During my last clean up, I smashed all that I saw and their numbers seem to be in check.

[shred5]

I do not know of much that would dent them.. They populate very fast and die fast, it depends on food, If you feed a lot of fine plankton type foods or blender mush you will have them. They die or starve fast. Their shells stay around forever though even when dead. Stop giving them food and in months they will die.

[hotelbravo]

But with thousands of their sharp Skeletons laying around I would have to take every rock out to manually remove them. Unless there is something that will eat them...

[Flippers4pups]

I'm not aware of any natural predators. If broken, they seem to multiply. As others have said, they go through a boom and then die off. You could glue their opening shut, but in large numbers, that becomes impractical.

Given enough time their numbers should decline. If not and they encroach on corals, drastic measures may be needed. ( Removing rock, acid bath......etc.)

[hotelbravo]

They are already encroaching all corals. They are eeevveerywhere

[shred5]

But with thousands of their sharp Skeletons laying around I would have to take every rock out to manually remove them. Unless there is something that will eat them...

Nothing is going to eat their skeleton. Maybe a urchin might chew a few down.. Anyway I know how much of a pain they can be.. I had one tank that under the rocks every inch was covered, they can hurt like hell...

[ThRoewer]

I'm not aware of any natural predators. ...
Only apex predators have no natural enemies (aside from diseases). There is most certainly something that eats them or they would not hide in the dark or bother to build a protective tube. Just because we don't know it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Also, a quick search on Google Scholar brought up this interesting article:

Guard crabs alleviate deleterious effects of vermetid snails on a branching coral (http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/38422447/Stieretal2010.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1473332622&Signature=OgY%2BA0gkh1UGXWm64tlAe%2FBSSmA%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DGuard_crabs_alleviate_deleterious_effect.pdf)

It seems Trapezia or Tetralia crabs (Acropora/Pocillopora/Stylophora crabs) keep the snails away from their corals.

[scooter31707]

Don't know how true it is, but my LFS said that the Halichoeres wrasses eat them.

[Flippers4pups]

Only apex predators have no natural enemies (aside from diseases). There is most certainly something that eats them or they would not hide in the dark or bother to build a protective tube. Just because we don't know it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Also, a quick search on Google Scholar brought up this interesting article:

Guard crabs alleviate deleterious effects of vermetid snails on a branching coral (http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/38422447/Stieretal2010.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1473332622&Signature=OgY%2BA0gkh1UGXWm64tlAe%2FBSSmA%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DGuard_crabs_alleviate_deleterious_effect.pdf)

It seems Trapezia or Tetralia crabs (Acropora/Pocillopora/Stylophora crabs) keep the snails away from their corals.


That's great for the SPS, but what about the remaining tank?

[2000se]

following this.

[becon776]

Everyone of thwse threads is a dead end

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[wmo168]

Agree, they are everywhere...

[McPuff]

I noticed some bigger ones in my tank. Started going through the rocks with a chisel and prying the buggers off the rocks. Gotta do another pass and this time I'll actually remove them from the tank. Maybe drop them in a cup of vinegar. Why? Because I want them to die! :0)

[becon776]

i have so many they have choked out all bit one of my sps. coris wrasse no, bumblebee snails no. about to get medieval on their @ss

[McPuff]

Parrotfish may eat them accidentally as they chew on the rocks. But then you're introducing another problem in your tank. I have certainly noticed that rinsing the mysis (well) and feeding more pellets vs frozen (LRS), there are fewer webs extending into the water. It doesn't seem to take long to starve them.

[deansreef]

always need to examine everything that goes into your tank and quarantine before if possible to avoid these and other pests from the beginning.

[ThRoewer]

In the other vermetid snail thread here someone reported that his bluespot puffer eliminated the vermetids. I'm assuming that the puffer only ate those he could reach which likely left plenty in obstructed areas where the fish couldn't get them. The fish also went after SPS corals which makes this a rather unsuitable solution for SPS systems where these pests actually cause damage.
I found a field report on observations on reefs that suggests that there are certain predatory snails which are specialized in feeding on vermetids and use their empty tubes as safe place to lay their eggs.
Another field report was about observations of total vermetid die-offs on certain visited reefs. This could indicate that there is a disease (viral or bacterial) or a parasite that has the potential to eliminate the snails completely from a system without the accessibility restrictions that apply to predatory fish and snails.

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[ThRoewer]

always need to examine everything that goes into your tank and quarantine before if possible to avoid these and other pests from the beginning.It is very hard to spot the juvenile stages of these snails and many other pests and parasites. You would have to avoid bringing anything other than coral frags (no plugs and no bases, just freshly cut frags that have not a single piece of skeleton exposed aside from the fresh cut), shrimp and crabs (only after a mold), and well quarantined fish into the tank.

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[McPuff]

It is very hard to spot the juvenile stages of these snails and many other pests and parasites. You would have to avoid bringing anything other than coral frags (no plugs and no bases, just freshly cut frags that have not a single piece of skeleton exposed aside from the fresh cut), shrimp and crabs (only after a mold), and well quarantined fish into the tank.

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Another consideration here is that the vermetids will grow up through coral, and their shells become encrusted with the coral itself. So if the vermetid is quite small it may be hard to know there's even one on the coral itself. In this case, removing from the plug will not help. This seems much more of a problem on monti species but could certainly happen on other sps types. And LPS are very susceptible... not sure how you could ensure that an LPS is completely free of this pest unless you kept it in a qt systems for several months.

[ThRoewer]

Another consideration here is that the vermetids will grow up through coral, and their shells become encrusted with the coral itself. So if the vermetid is quite small it may be hard to know there's even one on the coral itself. In this case, removing from the plug will not help. This seems much more of a problem on monti species but could certainly happen on other sps types. And LPS are very susceptible... not sure how you could ensure that an LPS is completely free of this pest unless you kept it in a qt systems for several months.

If there is a chemical treatment that kills snails but doesn't harm corals, that would be the solution for the new coral quarantine.
Unfortunately, I only know of things that kill crustacean or worms but nothing that would specifically target snails. If there would be something like that it could also be used to rid all rocks, one by one or the entire system at once, of these pests. One would just have to make sure to remove all good snails before treatment...

[ThRoewer]

Well, a quick search returned Niclosamide as a possible chemical countermeasure:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niclosamide
https://www.who.int/docstore/water_sanitation_health/vectcontrol/ch48.htm#b7-Chemical%20control

Though I would be extremely cautious to use this in a fully stocked reef tank without doing some prior research and small scale testing.