Snails from T&T

[Samw]

From this month's reef keeping magazine.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rs/index.htm

So there you have it. The ones for $5/lb are BC Tegula sp. snails (The clerk at T&T told me they are BC Snails) that look like Margarita (Margarites sp.) snails. Even true Margarita snails though are found in cooler waters. This explains why I have bought dozens of Margaritas but not 1 survived whereas my Astreas, Trochus, Ceriths are mostly all alive.


"I have counted over 120 annual growth rings on some specimens of Tegula funebralis, a temperate water species. This species is one of the three or four species of Trochoideans collected from cool water areas of Baja California and unethically sold to gullible, or informed, aquarists as a reef aquarium animal under the delightfully ambiguous name of "margarite or margarita snail. Tegula funebralis has a high thermal tolerance for an animal that lives in cold water areas (it ranges northward from Baja and is common in the British Columbian and Alaskan intertidal zones). They normally live a small fraction of one percent of their normal life span, or only a few months, in reef aquaria."

"This confusion is complicated by various distributors and dealers who just can't seem to grasp "The Phenomenon of a Name," and blissfully attach names seemingly at random to their livestock. A good example of this is in the common name, "Margarite snail." Well folks, I have been studying snails for a long time, and to me a "Margarite snail" is a snail in the genus Margarites. These are small snails, similar in many regards to the grazers we put into our tanks. They are even found in the tropics. However, when they are found in the tropics, they live several thousand feet down in water whose temperature is 39° F. or lower. In other words, there are no snails of the genus Margarites that are found in warm tropical waters."