Bumble Bee Snail

Care at a glance

Overview

A carnivorous scavenger rather than an algae eater, patrolling rock and sand at night for detritus, leftover meaty food and carrion, and it is credited with picking off pest snails such as vermetids and pyramidellids along the way. Because it needs meaty food to stay fed, an established tank with real detritus and microfauna suits it better than a freshly cycled one. In a very clean or under-stocked tank it can turn on tankmates, going after small worms, bristleworms or other small snails when nothing else is available, so keep it fed with the odd sinking meaty food if the tank runs lean.

In the wild

Engina mendicaria lives on shallow reef flats and rubble across the Indo-Pacific, from the Red Sea and East Africa through the Indian Ocean to Australia and the western Pacific, tucked into rock crevices and sand pockets during the day. In the aquarium it wants an established system with plenty of live rock to hide in and a sand bed to forage over, since it spends daylight hours out of sight and only comes out to hunt once the lights go down.

Good to know

Engina mendicaria is a small marine snail in the family Pisaniidae, a group of whelk-like carnivorous gastropods; older references also list it under the names Columbella mendicaria and Pusiostoma mendicaria as its classification was revised over the years. Its yellow shell banded in rows of small black beaded ridges gives it a strong resemblance to a bee or wasp, which is where the common name comes from. It stays small, rarely growing past about 2 cm, and unlike the grazing snails in a cleanup crew it hunts and scavenges by smell rather than eating algae.

Did you know

Its black-and-yellow banded shell mimics a bee or wasp, but the resemblance ends there. It hunts other small invertebrates by smell after dark and has no interest in algae at all.

Related species

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  Stomatella Snail

  Stomatella varia

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  Astraea Turbo Snail

  Astraea tecta

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• 

  Marine Nerite Snail

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• 

  Nassarius Snail

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• 

  Ring Cowrie

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• Trochus Snail

  Trochus sp.

  1.2 in (3 cm)11 gal (40 L)72–79°F (22–26°C)