Pyramidellid Snails
Picture taken October 1999 By Jim Fox with Nikon CoolPix 950 This is the last thing you ever want to see crawling on your clam shells. They can be difficult to spot. I find them mainly at night or early morning. You can usually find them just under the fleshy mantal on the growth ring on the clam. These snails can produce several hundred off-spring a week. In large numbers these snail can kill a clam. |
Pyramidellid Snails
Picture taken October 1999 By Jim Fox with Nikon CoolPix 950 Dr. Ronald Shimek was kind enough to help confirm the ID of these snails via e-mail based on the pictures on this page. |
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From: Ronald L. Shimek
Subject: Snail ID Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 ... I think, as you have feared, that these are parasitic pyramidellid snails and that they are parasitizing your clam. A clam in good health will almost always have several of these on them in nature, and a few are probably no big deal. However, they reproduce rapidly and well in aquaria and in very short order can become abundant enough to overwhelm the clam's defences and kill it. In addition to attacking around the mantle edges, they will go into the byssus and attack there. They pierce the clam's epidermis and eat the blood and some internal tissue products that they pump out. There are supposedly several ways to control these, but I can't vouch for any of them as I don't keep Tridacna. Some of the methods include manual removal, the use of wrasses, and the use of larger hermit crabs - some of which eat the snails. Good luck on finding a method to eradicate or control them. Ron |