WTF? It's a snail relative of some type.

[Anonymous]

These things are thriving in my tanks. About them:

1. NEVER goes on the sand, ever. Glass and rockwork only.
2. Appears to be algae grazer, i have yet to see it on a coral.
3. Obvious snail relative. "head" has a snail mouth and two snail antenna
4. The Foot extends back past the shell
5. The shell is a lot like a clamshell. In fact, that's what I thought it was at first. There's even an irregular place where the shell hinge might have been. But the creature makes its own shell, I've watched the one in the pic grow from about 1cm to about 1inch
6. The one in the pic is mostly pure black when viewed by the naked eye. The shell has weird iridescent sheen action going on.
7. I also have fluorescent orange and tan/sand/camoflague varieties.
8. They reproduce quickly, especially the black ones.
9. Very tough to get a pic of, usually a night creature.

 

[Anonymous]

Is it me, or does that look like an abalone?

 

[Anonymous]

I have no idea what an abalone is I guess, I thought they looked like conch deals.

Is it valuable? Who wants to buy some fluorescent orange ones?

ps that was fast. Do you have a "reply to hwarang" alert script on your computer? LMAO!

 

[abbeyspal]

I was thinkin the same thing seamaiden.

 

[Anonymous]

someone on nano-reefs.com pegged it as a stomatella snail. i was able to look it up based on that and found some vaunted ron shimek comments to back that up.

"These are grazers and are actually a trochid, with a very flat shell. Good grazers, and they often reproduce well in a tank without hermit crabs."


http://www.saltreef.com/galleries/snails.htm

 

[Juck]

I think that's an abalone,,,,, I've never seen a Stomella with those little frilly fronds.

 

[Anonymous]

I like the cool little trumpet coming out the back like the exhaust pipe of a rice-racer. Aren't abalone a type of snail, too?

 

[Anonymous]

Oh yeah, I forgot to ask if there's a row of holes along the other side.

 

[Anonymous]

the exhaust pipe is actually coming out the front. there isn't a row of holes, however i did some reading and some say the holes are hard to spot (or not there? it was unclear, i need to read more about it) while the thing is young. and yes, abalone is in the same family as snails.

 

[Anonymous]

That's a Stomatella varia. Abalone look very similar in general appearance, but get much larger, have holes in the shell, and don't have nearly as much foot extending beyond the shell. If you'd like to see a pic of a tropical one, google Haliotis. We have a few of these in our display tank at school. The frills are quite normal for Stomatella as well. FWIW, they can drop off part of their foot like a lizard drops its tail.


They come in lots of neat colors too:

 

[Anonymous]

cool thanks matt. i have one really neat fluorescent orange one. very vivid, very cool. the black ones are generally neato too. there are a bunch of ugly like sandy camo ones i don't care for, i might move them out of there. i think they might be competing with my other snails for algae, and while i like the black and orange ones the tan ones are boring.