Snail damage on Acropora?? Ugh :(

Pkunk35 · Oct 2, 2012

Hey R2R,

So i came home from work today and of course the first thing i did was check my tank to make sure all was good. It was not.

I saw this snail on my new CC acropora frag...no big deal...and then i saw the pearly white skeleton of the acropora underneath the snail:

This has actually happened before with a Leptoseris frag and this same snail...i had considered it a fluke but now this has me concerned. I'm guessing that this is just the rasping of the mouth that is just incidentally damaging the coral skin as the snail seeks out algae?

I just checked the mille again and confirmed that the tissue at the white spots is gone, only the polyp remains. The rest of the coral looks normal with good PE.

Some background on the snail: It came from my friend's tank who had a population explosion with them and had given me two of them. They have been in my tank for almost 3 years (one very recently died of unknown causes). They have a soft black skirt around their bodies and are ~2-3" long. I do not know what kind of snail it is but looks like a stomatella from the shape of the shell and the speed of the snail.

So what do you guys think of this? Has this ever happened to you? Can anyone identify this snail?

SeahorseKeeper · Oct 2, 2012

That is a scutus which is also known as a keyhole limpet. I had one in my tank that was decimating my corals.

Pkunk35 · Oct 2, 2012

SeahorseKeeper said:
That is a scutus which is also known as a keyhole limpet. I had one in my tank that was decimating my corals.

wow seahorse keeper you are awesome you nailed it! This is what i found on liveaquaria who actually sells them:

"Use caution when considering placing Limpet snails in reef aquariums that contain SPS corals as these snails have been known to sometimes graze on certain species of Acropora, Montipora and other similar species."

it explains so much, especially as to why it happened when the lepto got in there. Thank you for solving this!

Good bye mr. limpet.