I am starting this thread with the hopes of developing a list of clear pictures of common marine snails in the hobby with corresponding scientific names and other information for use in the TFF index (or some other compiled species identification thread to help people figure out what’s crawling around their tanks). There are a lot of great photographers here, so hopefully a good list will result. This is open to any type of shelled gastropod, including cowries and limpets.
The following sorts of pictures will help:
Known as well as mystery critters are welcome. For mystery critters, someone (probably me, if someone else doesn’t get to it first) will make an effort to go digging through books and shell databases to identify it. However, even if you don't know the species, please post whatever information you do know. For example: what common name it had when sold to you, what you’ve seen it eat, what species you think it might be (if you know the genus and species for certain, this is even better), what region it was collected from, etc.
Fine print: pictures should be your own and you should be ok with any information and photos you post here being gathered and reused with attribution in some sort of species identification thread on TFF.
Now, show off your snails!
The following sorts of pictures will help:
- Pictures of these attributes for each animal, if possible:
- The shell.
- The soft tissue/body.
- The operculum, if there is one. This is also called the "trap door." Snails that have an operculum will usually show it most clearly when closed up.
- Pictures of multiple individuals from the same species. Individual variation can be a big source of confusion when trying to identify snails based on shell collections/databases.
- CLEAR PICTURES that are also reasonably big, >200x200 pixels if possible, closer to 600x800 being better. Blurry pictures, small/low resolution pictures, or those that don’t clearly show the animal in some way will not help others much to identify their animals.
Known as well as mystery critters are welcome. For mystery critters, someone (probably me, if someone else doesn’t get to it first) will make an effort to go digging through books and shell databases to identify it. However, even if you don't know the species, please post whatever information you do know. For example: what common name it had when sold to you, what you’ve seen it eat, what species you think it might be (if you know the genus and species for certain, this is even better), what region it was collected from, etc.
Fine print: pictures should be your own and you should be ok with any information and photos you post here being gathered and reused with attribution in some sort of species identification thread on TFF.
Now, show off your snails!
