The snail that ate my fish room

This is some sort of apple snail that came in a shipment of ramshorns, and now the smaller snails use him as a vehicle to get around. The ramshorn at the bottom of the pic is at least the size of a US nickel, for perspective. Kids named him Giga.

One heck of a snail!

WOW! He's a big'un alright! I just LOVE this picture!! :)

The thing is, I've only had him a couple of weeks and he started out the size of your fingernail, so I didn't think much of it, and figured he'd be lunch like the rest. Someone this weekend suggested he'd make a good "vacation feeder" for the puffer.....

The puffer would die tryin', that much is certain!

My pair of puffers would swim the other direction. Beautiful snail!

They will get to the size of a golf ball. I have some that big in my pond.

I had a big snail like that so I put him in my Red Zebra tank, The End. I thought he was big enough to hold his own but needless to say he disappeared.

That one is already bigger than a golf ball. He is huge and of course I am the one that suggested the vacation feeder.

Lol yeah that snail is huge! Pretty neat invert. Where are you getting your snails from?

That is an asolene spixi snail . They are awesome little buggers !! I LOVE them and have boat loads of them. most of my 41 tanks have them in them .
Ray

Ben wrote:

... of course I am the one that suggested the vacation feeder.

I was giving you plausible deniability, but, yes, Ben was the one!

Flippercon wrote:

Where are you getting your snails from?

I ordered them from Aquabid, from seller "Nellylola," but it looks like she might be packing up business based on recent listings on their site. She was an extremely good person to work with, with cheap and very fast shipping, and she even included a variety of fish foods with the order to reflect what she usually feeds and to get me started. She provided advice on the setup in order to get them breeding successfully, etc.

I was having trouble with my camera but finally got it working in macro (temporarily - it quit working again right after this single shot!)

Ray, I'm pretty sure this one is a Pomacea diffusa/bridgesii based on the shape of the shell and the body color, and the length of the siphon. I know there are a lot of variations, though! I don't know why I've had so little success with mystery snails in the past, because I'd definitely have more if they did as well as this one. I'd not mind having another for a couple of my other tanks - they are fascinating.

"I'm pretty sure this one is a Pomacea diffusa/bridgesii based on the shape of the shell and the body color, and the length of the sipon. "

You are probably correct . Although they are an apple snail , Spixi do not have siphon tubes .

I had a couple of bridgesii in my 80 gallon that bred ! They had more than one egg clutch and I had hundreds of those little buggers in there . Sold most of them on ebay on the cheap ! LOL
Good luck with the one you have . And make sure you feed it with some thing that has calcium in it . Otherwise you will get white rings on their shell , and the shell will be weak.
Ray

Nice looking Brigg...Pomacea bridgesii.

Spixi's only get to around an inch.

Thanks, Ray. I'm not really looking forward to any egg clutches if I do breed this snail, since the last time I saw one of those I was so grossed out I was almost cured of ever having another apple snail! However, it would be cool to get something going.

I'm also thinking this one might need to be relocated, where I can focus his diet a little better. I'm feeding slightly less calcium rich food in this tank so the ramshorn shells aren't too hard, since I want the puffer to be able to break into them, but this huge snail definitely needs it to support his shell. I have a tank in my kitchen (goldfish tank, don't tell Whisper!) where he would be a wonderful feature. There is a large ramshorn in that tank right now that does very well, so I might swap them out.

I love the photo. Looks like the ramshorn snails are keeping your mystery snail perfectly polished!

That is one major snail!

If the large red ramshorn (bottom) is nickel size then the apple snail is already larger than a golf ball. Good luck with it!

I remember well that ghastly pink egg clutch that you found up in your light hood. However, I suppose you can get used to it if baby snails are your goal. Keep us posted!

If you're thinking of moving the snail to the goldfish tank maybe check with the goldie sites about how goldfish react to the antennae? Just in case they like to pick at them ...

Ya, there's people who keep them with goldfish and claim they are compatible. It would make me very nervous to do that.

Well, he's just about bigger than the goldfish are right now! They are fantails and can't move as quickly as him, either....

However, I can put him in there and if they pester him I'll take him out. They do not pester the large ramshorn one bit, and seem to be unaware of its presence. I don't think they could easily ignore this one. He is a lot of snail for the 10-gal in terms of bioload and what I have to feed to keep the ramshorn colony going. It is a real chore keeping the tank clean.

How long should this snail live, ideally?

I have had my share of stories with Gold Mystery Snails of the sort :D The red pinkish goopie dry egg sac that turns to a mustard orange for the particular type I have/had... They mated for about 2 months and then laid about 20 *no joke, no exaggeration* egg hatch clutch things... ~.~* They started all hatching and I was overwhelmed with snails... I moved 10 of them *including the two adults* into my new 35-40 gallon tank and the babies began growing bigger than the adults... but the second night that I had them in their new tank one found a way out and landed on the ground in pieces... the third night the second one followed but only got a chip on her shell near the opening... then ~.~* The 4th night she followed the male into life after...

Point being is that they grow VERY QUICKLY compared to what tank size it is. The 275 of the first batch that lived in the 5 gallon tank never got larger than a dime *I knew there were that many because I was lucky enough to sell the first batch and had to count them out individually for someone who wanted 25/25/and 200! Then there were 25 left and after the rest were gone, they grew to the size of nickels... but would grow no more! I put one of them in the big tank to see what would happen and he shot up there with the rest!

Then a few more of the clutches hatched and I had over 400 in the tank Noone wanted them, I couldn't even give them away for free... so ~.~* I had no other thing to do *at the time* than put them all out of their own misery of living in an over crowded populace in a 5 gallon tank... BUT I must tell everyone it IS illegal to let these little guys out into the wild so you have to destroy them or find them homes with people!

Then, all 10 of the snails in the tank started to get pocks in their shells and then for about a week or two they hibernated or whatever they do and they were moving around just fine and all their pocks were gone! ... Then a month later they all died But I still had 8 of the babies left and I kept 2 and gave the rest to my neighbor who LOVES SNAILS! they are the happiest things in the world in my tank all by themselves *with the fishies and plants of course* but ... they mated and laid 5 clutch... and when their offspring hatched... :-/ they got to the size of bbs and all died. Never even climbed from the gravel like they are supposed to! *they crawl around under the gravel like little bugs and then as they get bigger they can move the gravel and eat ontop of it and have much more of a happy existence with the rest of the fish/snails... :( Why did they die?!!?! WHY!?!?!?!

BUT You do have an awesome snail there :D I've seen pictures of Mystery Snails the size of a grown man's fist!!!! *a big man too* I am so jealous of you seeing as mine grow no larger than the palm of my hand... :(

Oh yeah, and they have ate about 5-6 fish now... :-/ In the 14 months that I've had fish I have had that many fish eaten by snails...

Sometimes I will go to bed with 6 fish and wake up with 5... once I seen two snails trap a fish between a rock and eachother and they slowly *very slowly* enclosed him as he squirmed trying to get away as they ate him... :-/ Poor guy.

@ T-Girl ,,

The apple snail's life expectancy mainly depends on the temperature of their environment and the general life conditions. At lower temperatures, the apple snail can get over 3 years old and records of apple snails of ten years old have been reported. Lanistes nyassanus has an estimated life span of 5 to 10 years in Lake Malawi, Africa.
At a temperature of 25°C, they will only live 12-16 months. At higher temperatures, the snails are more active because their metabolism increases with the temperature, but this also speeds up their life cycle and thus shortens their life expectancy.
So you can elongate your snail's life by lowering the temperature. A general rule: keep the temperature between 18 and 28°C (65-82°F).
It is suspected that at least some apple snail species need an aestivation period in the mud to avoid burning-out.

Here is a good site for all your Apple Snail Questions

http://www.applesnail.net/content/faq.php#18

Ray

wow I love the snail pic

lifeisgood wrote:

Here is a good site for all your Apple Snail Questions

applesnail.net/content/faq.php#18

Ray

That site DEFINITELY HELPED me when I was freaking outt about my snails when I first got them! Thanks for posting it :-)