#freshwater snails

[grovesnail]

two new freshwater snails species where discovered & named after lord of the rings characters. meet idiopyrgus meriadoci & eowynae (named ofc after meriadoc & éoywn)

[nanojungle]

Week 3

So after a bit of research and with some help from the lovely people at the local fish shop, my lil underwater garden is looking luscious and healthy!

I’ve chosen plants which are nitrate hungry. The LFS guy said that plants that are bought off online stores sometimes arrive so beat up that they usually can’t muster the energy to root. It might have been a pitch to sell me some plants but I found that he was right. All the plants I bought managed to take root within the week and are looking bushy and happy.

The Monte Carlo is now completely cleaned out and the Rotala also got trashed too. Instead we have water weed, water wisteria and hornwort as the background plants (all nitrate hungry fast growers) and we have Anubias on the rocks and Java fern by the filter. As the Hornwart grows, I chop the new shoots up into little bouquets held by lead weights. They function as new plants so I can keep filling in the background.

The best news of all; the tank is cycled! I’ll give it a week to see if it’s stable and then we can get some wet pets in there!!

[theinkchild]

my greenest jars!

and bonus...

baby snails!!!

[https-chaos]

New friends!! I love this hobby so much

[aquariuminfobureau]

The Colombian snail, Marisa cornuarietis, is more properly known as the Colombian ramshorn apple snail, but is also known as a giant ramshorn snail, or Colombian ramshorn snail. It is a pilid, or true apple snail, and not a planorbid, or ramshorn snail. The reference to its size, is because the diameter of its shell, exceeds 5 centimeters, or 2 inches. It is most commonly traded as a specific, yellowish color morph. M. cornuarietis possesses both gills and a lung, and is native to still or slow-moving freshwaters in the Neotropics, that are rich with aquatic vegetation, which form the primary component of its mostly herbivorous diet.

Though M. cornuarietis will eat algae and leftover food, it may also damage aquarium plants, because they constitute most of its natural diet. Where it is native or introduced, this snail feeds on popular aquarium plant species, such as Cabomba, Elodea, Myriophyllum, Eichornia, and Pistia. Interestingly, under conditions of high water temperatures, or more understandably in the relative absence of suitable macrophytes as foods, these snails aquire an increased preference for protein in their diets. Predation by M. cornuarietis upon other gastropod species, including their eggs, has been well documented, and the species also preys upon on some other aquatic fauna, as well as consuming carrion such as dead fishes.

Pilids, also known as ampullarids, are a successful clade of gastropods found in freshwater habitats. They possess at once both a gill and a lung, and they are characterised as quite amphibious. However their air breathing ability comes to the fore mainly in periods of drought, in warm, seasonal climates. Breathing air enabled ancestral apple snails to survive until the season of high rainfall returns. In fact they are otherwise highly aquatic, but many species deposit their eggs above the water line to deter egg predation. Snails have invaded terrestrial and freshwater environments several times, and the pilids are not closely related to the planorbid ranshorns. The similarity of Marisa to the latter is not through common descent.

Over its wide natural range, M. cornuarietis populations display variations in its life cycle, which has been cited to suggest that it may be a species complex, rather than a single species. Alternatively, it may simply be a very plastic and adaptable species in this regard. Snails currently classified as M. cornuarietis, have become invasive in some parts of the world where they have been introduced, because of their resilience and adaptability, tolerating tempertures of 13 to 35 degrees centigrade. This includes their ability to breathe atmospheric oxygen, whilst aestivating in mud, to outlast the dry season. M. cornuarietis is a bit amphibious, and can survive for days out of the water, although it lays its eggs below the waterline, unlike some other ampullarid snails. As with other apple snails, the tank lid must therefore be firmly secure, or these snails may crawl out.

[luckystarfishboy]

Life has exploded in the orb as of late. The baby guppies have tripled in size!

[fishlord-of-the-shrimpire]

yay i got the shrimp on a snail photo!!

🦐🐌

[waterskies]

Some of the good photos from today's photoshoot!

[battfishe]

chappell pondering the new snails

(she was not impressed)

[isopodiclopedia]

Left: New England Nudibranchs

Right: Pacific Coast Nudibranchs

MS, R. Tucker A., and The New Illustrated Naturalist. 1954. ‘American Seashells’. 1st ed. Princeton, New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc.

[leaf-thief]

Lymnea stagnalis

[nanojungle]

Fish Wishes!

(Images aren’t mine, snatched from google)

Ok so I’ve thought about this for awhile and I’ve seen a couple of these guys in fish stores and done the research to figure out what’s going to be happiest in my 15G nano tank.

Honey Gourami as the centrepiece fish

When I see these guys iRL, they’re always inquisitive, swimming right up to things and then giving them a little pat with their feelers. They’re cute and interesting to watch. Generally considered a peaceful community fish but Reddit has been full of stories of them bullying their own kind until they die :< As they’re happy solo, I think I can give them a stress free life being the centrepiece fish of the tank with a few easygoing nano fish friends.

Or Sparkling Gourami as the centrepiece?

I love the idea of Sparklers. I fell in love with the YouTube series from Foo the Flowerhorn where they set up a tank with sparklers and amanos. In reality I think it’s very risky for the amanos; I’ve had LFS guys and Reddit posts give me anecdotes about the sparklers eating shrimp or killing them off slowly by beating them into hiding. Let’s be honest, I do this hobby to relax. I’m not going to have violence in my tank! Such a shame as they’re so pretty. The image of these guys with their turquoise scales and a backdrop of a bunch of baby blue jelly shrimps would be soo cool but I know there would be suffering so it would never be worth it.

Nano fish

Celestial Pearl Danios

Excuse the shitty iPhone vid. Sometimes you just have to go to see some fish iRL to figure if you’re really going to love them.

I’ll tell you what, every time I see these guys in real life they make my heart flutter with how stinking cute they are. They have beautiful colours and are so small. The ones I’ve seen in store have been about 0.8” in length.

Chilli rasbora

These are another species that always catch my attention in person. Their little faces and big eyes are too cute to handle and their body shape looks like a miniature red shark. They’re also micro predators so they would have a great time gobbling up the creatures and loose eggs in the tank. Thankfully their mouths are too small to do any damage to shrimps!

Extras;

When I think of all the gross lil non-fish creatures I would enjoy in a tank, my mind always gravitates to cherry shrimp or amanos. With amanos I think i’d like the peace of mind to rely on these lil dudes to clean up the nastier hairier algae if it turns up.

However, a hoard of cherries swarming the tank and filling it with bright colours would also be so fun! Blue jellies are the cutest but bright orange ones look like you’ve got a tank full of pre cooked shrimp or living cheetos.

Anyways, that’s my fish wishes! Im not going to get every one of these fish, just a centrepiece fish, some skrimps if compatible and a small shoal of nano fish.

Next weekend I might go to the LFS and see what I can find, I’m so excited!

[theinkchild]

my snails are doing acrobatics today

[addfish]

Last time I bought plants from a fish shop I got an unexpected surprise - tiny snails had hitched a ride to my tank! I wasn't sure what kind they were as they were so small (I thought they might be bladder snails but their shells were a bit different) so I just left them to grow for a few weeks... it turns out they are blue ramshorn snails! Their shells are now 1.5-2cm wide and are a very pretty dappled pastel blue with hints of pink, some are plain and others have a gorgeous leopard spot pattern. I have about 10 and they seem to be laying eggs, so I will have more baby snails in no time! I have noticed there are some small bites out of my plants, so I will have to make sure they have enough algae wafers and calcium blocks to munch on!

[anxioustwilightreblogs]

ALSO I need money to keep buying things for my tank maintenance, so if you are unwilling to help *me* PLEASE consider helping my little snail and shrimpy guys 💔

This month we’re low on money. Dad had to get a new bank card and forgot to switch over the bills on autopay, so he had to pay two months worth of bills this month. TL;DR Please visit my Etsy store where I sell cheap Tarot Readings and Profile Pic Commissions, OR here’s my PayPal. Thank you! 💜

[fishhag]

A young assassin snail on the prowl