A worm or a snail?

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piotr
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A worm or a snail?

Post by piotr »

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It is a snail!

Vermetids are marine snails that occupy calcareous tubes. They superficially look like worms. There is a little "door" (operculum) at the end of the tube. The snail releases bands of mucus, waits until particles floating in water attach to the mucus, and pulls the mucus back eating anything that is glued to it.

The tube diameter is approx. 3mm. The mucus bands can be very long (5 inch). This snail lives in my newly established 5-gallon saltwater tank.

Here and here you can read very interesting articles about these snails, written by Dr. Ron Shimek.

I used Nikon D50 with Vivitar 100mm/3.5 macro lens and built-in flash to take the pictures.
Piotr

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