MarcG

On my way from my office to my bedroom I decided to check out my tank one last time before putting some laundry away. As I was looking at some amphipods that were scurrying around my zoanthids I noticed something moving in the sand. I have baby nassarius snails!!!!!!!! I posted a while back about my nassariuses laying eggs on the glass, and I always assumed that my fish ate them. I guess now that my tank has been fishless for over a month that they are no longer food and have been growing in my sand. They range from very tiny (smaller than an amphipod, close to the size of a pin head) to almost the size of a zoa head. As I looked around the sand bed I noticed the really tiny ones sitting on top of grains of sand/small crushed coral. They are pretty hard to see in the pics but you can make out the shell.

This first one actually has two of the "larger" ones.



This one shows the tiny ones. I've found about 10 of these so far. They're really hard to pick out. They look so much like the substrate that you have to wait for one to move.


UPDATE:
I didn't see any around my clam but I'll take it out later.I tried taking one from the sand bed out this morning, MUCH harder than I thought. I put it in an old acrylic 3g tank that my top down box would fit in and on top of a black surface. Here is the result. I'm still not 100% sure which snail it is. I wish I had a better camera.


I also took one of a nassarius on a rock. This one I am positive about. After I put it on the sand bed it buried itself right away.