Death to the Whelk!

[Duane Clark]

I had to play the great white hunter today. I have had a whelk in my tank I found and identified about a week ago. He rode in with my live rock I am sure. finally grew big enough to find. I read where they are carnivorous but decided to watch him anyway. I was viewing my tank just now and saw that he was poking out of the depths of my live rock. I was amused to watch one of my sexy shrimp "sound the alarm" to his presence (tail wagging and him bouncing back and forth). The sexy went right up to him, poked at his proboscis and basically stood guard while the whelk proceeded to climb the live rock. I noticed one of my dwarf cerith snails near by but didn't think much about it. Then the whelk turned on the speed (for a snail) and crawled on top of the cerith and flipped him with fairly amazing speed and began his cruel attack. That's all I had to see...the Whelk is now gone. I really hated to kill him (he was only doing what he was supposed to do I suppose) and he was fascinating to watch but I cant have him methodically killing my dwarf ceriths and who knows what else as he grew. None the less, that was very cool to watch.

 

[cracker]

That's when You bust his shell & feed it to the others. Good job!

 

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

WoW! Those guys are vicious!

 

[dowsetts101]

That's when You bust his shell & feed it to the others. Good job!

So I’m assuming that “Death to the whelk” is the only safe path? Sump not a good place for them? I need to do something about the 4 that I’ve got!!!

 

[reef lover]

You can sump them but without thier prey they would slowly starve anyways....

 

[cracker]

dowsettes101 My apologies. My comment was half in jest. I understand them sounding cruel. It's something that happens in nature all the time .

 

[Ron Reefman]

That's life (and death) on the reef.

My wife and I snorkel in the Florida Keys and one time she found an 18" to 24" long Horse Conch eating a Florida Fighting Conch. I just can't find the photos!!! That's what happens when you do 3 to 5 snorkel trips a year for 15 years and take hundreds of photos every time we snorkel, which is 3 to 5 times per trip!

 

[dowsetts101]

dowsettes101 My apologies. My comment was half in jest. I understand them sounding cruel. It's something that happens in nature all the time .

Nope, no dramas at all, I understood completely. All animals will do what their nature compelled them to do, and I suppose it’s or job to try not to put them in a situation where they are doing something that we don’t want them to do.

With this being my first experience with whelks I was trying to get a handle on whether they had any place in a Reef tank at all...ie would they serve a useful function safely in the sump without my other snails.

I’m pretty sure now that they are something to avoid...unlike all those pods I’ve been enjoying discovering!!!

 

[John3]

I’ve got a whelk too, I just haven’t caught it being a bad boy yet. It’s kinda cool, it always goes back to the same nook to sleep.

 

[saltyhog]

I've always struggled to for sure identify whelks among my nassarius snails as they have a lot of similarities. One way for me is behavior. Nassarius will come up out of the sand when you feed and will hardly ever be seen on the live rock where as whelks spend lots of time hunting there!

Agree with @Ron Reefman. In Hawaii we watched a giant conch run down (well, for a conch he was running) a tuxedo urchin. You could almost hear the urchin screaming....