[AJ_77]

And something to keep in mind, from an RC post.

Tip of the day - inspect your snails!
I lost a t.maxima today that I added two weeks ago -- lost him to pyramidellidae, or pyramid or rice snails. I know they didn't come in on the clam, my suspicion is that they were on some astrea or turbo snails I added a month or two ago, and this would explain why so may astrea snails have been dying lately. So my daily ritual now is that once or twice a day, I remove each astrea and turbo I can find and use tweezers to pull sometimes as many as 8 or 10 pyramid snails from each snail. According to the Knop clam book, p. 105, pyramid snails have a reproductive cycle of 2 weeks from egg to snail, and they can become sexual in just 40 days, so a few of them can become a whole mess of them very quickly. After just a few days I am already finding fewer snails, and Dr. Ron thinks that if I am diligent for a month or so, I can get the better of the parasites. So the lesson is, before adding any new snails to your tank, inspect them closely for parasitic snails.

Here's a picture of said parasite:

http://www.harboraquatics.com/images...idelline02.jpg

I know I'll be checking.

AJ