Queen Conch behavior

[Sea Serpent]

Hi all,
I have had my queen conch for about a year - maybe more. She is quite big - approx 3+ inches. In October, when I did a huge tank overhall, she buried herself too deeply in the sand and I lost track of her for a few days. I unearthed her and she was fine. My take was that she is soooo biiiggg that she couldn't quiet crawl out of the deep sand. In November, she buried herself too deeply again and I couldn't find her. I poked and prodded the sand - she was gone. A MYSTERY. (I didn't poke the sandbed around the sea pen because I really don't know how big the animal is under the sand - it disappears every night into the sand and I have no idea what is under there . . . )

Last night, I found her. While looking closely at the sand around my sea pen, I saw her eye poking out of the sand. I couldn't believe my eyes. I carefully unearthed her, she was fine. AFTER MORE THAN 2 MONTHS buried. I put her on the sand, she started eating like nothing had happened. How could she have survived 2 months without moving? After about an hour, she buried herself again - but atleast I know where she is.
They are amazing creatures. I am in awe of mother nature.

 

[trigger0214]

It seems like all my snails will go in cycles between cleaning the rocks and glass and burying themselves in the sand to forrage for food. Some days (up to a week) I swear I have no snails at all, with the exception of the tops of the conch snails and, oh yeah ALL THE SNAIL TURDS!!!. By the way...what are you using to clean up all that detritous that your Quens are leaving around? I have a Chevron tang (who doesn't really eat it) and a small tigger tail cuke (just big enought to clean around a 7-8 inch radius). I also can't stomach the idea of buying one of those creepy brittle star things...yik

 

[Leopardshark]

i have 4 queens, they do bury a little, like 1/2 of their body but never 100%
as long as he is still alive, I don´t think there shold be any reason to worry.
Good luck

 

[ronhaake]

I have had two queen conchs for five months now. At first mine would spend a day or so under the sand and then a couple of days on top. As time has progressed, they have gradually gone to spending 90% of their time buried. I woried that I had lost one or both for a while, but then they would pop up again and wiggle those stalky eyes at me.

From my reading, although this is not average for 2" queens, it is also not unprecedented. I've read people saying that theirs had been buried for 6 months at a time. Mine have stayed buried for about three weeks at a time.

As I understand it, these guys are far from stuck and unproductive when buried, unless they are too big to navigate around fixed obstacles. I can see this being an issue for a 3"+ conch. I think they avoid the anerobic zone in the bottom 1/4 to 1/3 of the DSB, but their turning over the sand without decimating the infauna is considdered one of the conch's best traits. Queens don't get quite as big as most, but like to submarine more.

My big surprise with these two, is that they bred about two months ago. I now have 50+ babies that now are between 1/8" and 3/8" long. They were so tiny, I couldn't confirm an ID on them at first, so I sent a couple of photos to Dr. Ron Shimek and he confirmed that they were conchs. It's pretty obvious now, and these guys are all over the entire tank, top to bottom. I saw one going for the ride of his life on the end of a strand of feather caulerpa that was blowing right in front of a return line just tonight. Maybe they will be worth a bit at the LFS when they get a little bigger.