Hi All,
 
After being informed by my wife of my new cone's
arrival, I was anxious to get home and see the new guy
in action.  Bob Dayle had cautioned that conus textile
and conus marmoreus were natural enemies, and I was
curious to see if the reaction would be the same between
the textiles, Art and Paul, and a deep-water first cousin
of marmoreus, conus bandanus.
 
When I arrived at home and checked on the aquarium,
all was calm, with none of the molluscs in the tank active.
I removed the conus bandanus and measured him, a nice
83mm, and I dubbed the new resident Emilio.  The lights
had been on since Emilio had been introduced to his new
home, so I extinguished them to see if the activity would
pick up a little.  In typical fashion, Eduardo Magnificus
was the first to make a move.  Eduardo came crawling out
of the rubble, ignoring the new guy, and headed up the
wall of the aquarium in search of an easy meal.  He eased
up to a cypraea caurica positioned near the water line,
sniffed at him, and turned around and headed back for
the bottom of the tank.  This time he went straight toward
Emilio, evidently just recognizing him as an intruder.
 
In faster-than-cowry-stalking speed, Eduardo marched up
nose-to-nose with Emilio, extending his proboscis in a
gesture that I was sure was not a "Welcome" in cone
language.  Emilio beat him to the punch, however, and
snaked out his long white proboscis and harpooned my
favorite conus magnificus.  Eduardo flinched, then turned
to crawl away, but only moved an inch or so.  The conus
bandanus withdrew back into his shell, and made no
attempt at eating Eduardo.  I watched as the magnificus
stretched out his foot and retracted it, and moved his
siphon, but he seemed to be unable to coordinate his
crawling muscles.  His foot would move, but he couldn't
crawl.  This was the exact reaction that I had seen in
Mark Episcopatus after Art Textile had stung him, and
I knew that it didn't bode well.  Eduardo remained in the
same location for the next three days, except for the
occasions when I removed him to verify that he was
still alive, and like Mark, after three days he was dead.
It was depressing, but life in the aquarium goes on.
 
Nothing much happened the rest of the evening, but
when I arose the next morning practically every cone
in the aquarium was out hunting, with the exception
of Art and Paul.  A few days before, with everything
settled, I had introduced two new residents to the tank,
a conus tulipa and a conus striatus.  Both of these
new guys are piscivorous, but I thought I would just
put them in the tank for a while to see how they inter-
acted with the molluscivorous cones.  The tulipa was
the most active of all the cones I had had in my
aquarium, and spent all the hours of darkness out
hunting.  He would "bulldoze" the cowries around the
water line of the tank, and attempted to crawl down
the water circulation pipe with the air bubbles in his
face, but never made any attempt at eating anything
in the aquarium, other than my little trigger fish.  (He
did finally catch the little guy.)  This morning he was
out crawling as usual, as were Andy and Gary Omaria
and Ross Canonicus.  Emilio had partially buried
himself, with the tip of his siphon exposed just above
the gravel.
 
I sat watching all the action this morning, curious how
Emilio would react to all the other cones moving about.
Andy Omaria would be the morning's test case.  Andy
ambled toward Emilio, apparently lacking the sense
of danger that Eduardo had displayed.  As Andy came
closer, Emilio extended his proboscis (which can be
extended almost twice as far as his siphon, by the way).
He "felt" for the conus omaria's foot, found it, and zapped
him.  Andy was immediately unable to crawl, and Emilio
didn't retract this time.  He slowly, almost clumsily, re-
positioned himself above the aperture of the conus omaria,
and without extending his foot, proceeded to extract the
victim from his shell.  The process took almost an hour,
but Andy's shell was completely empty when he was
finished.  Twelve hours in the tank, and Emilio had killed
two of my molluscivorous cones.  I was beginning to
wonder why a "super-predator" like conus bandanus
didn't simply wipe out the cone population in an area,
instead of being so uncommon like they are in American
Samoa.
 
After eating Andy, Emilio buried himself in the rubble,
with his siphon against the front glass of the aquarium.
He remained there for the next two days, and gave me
the opportunity to watch his reaction as the other animals
moved over him.  Several times cowries crawled over the
bandanus' siphon, but he never showed the slightest
interest.  In fact, for the entire time he has been in the
aquarium, Emilio has ignored the cowries, showing
interest only in the other cones.  After a couple of days
in this position, the bandanus decided it was time to
move, and so did Paul Textile.
 
As Emilio dragged himself from the rubble, Paul emerged
on the opposite side of the tank, obviously perturbed.
He crawled directly up to Emilio, but not in a frontal
attack like Eduardo had attempted.  The textile extended
his pink proboscis when he was still six inches from the
bandanus, and approached him from the side, about an
inch behind his anterior tip.  The bandanus froze as the
textile approached, and never moved to defend him-
self as he had done with Eduardo.  Paul was strictly
business, and never hesitated.  He stopped his advance
as soon as his proboscis would reach Emilio's foot,
and stung the conus bandanus the first place he touched.
Emilio instantly withdrew, but Paul wasn't finished.  He
crawled a little closer, extended his proboscis under
the lip of Emilio's shell, and appeared to harpoon him
again.  He repeated this five times, moving up the length
of the shell toward the spire, and then turned around and
marched off.  Paul had obviously recognized the intruder
as a dangerous enemy, and was intent on killing him,
not on eating him.  It wasn't quite a "David and Goliath"
battle, but by volume, Emilio must be at least three times
as large as the 63mm conus textile.
 
(Final round coming soon...)
 
 
Cheers,
 
 
 
Don