Aquariums: The Mystery Snail “mystery”

Scroll through the images to see a timeline of this story, captured ~photographically~

Backstory: I set up this tank a good few years ago. It’s a 55 gallon. To decorate it, I found some logs that had been cut up from an oak tree that fell in our front yard after 2017’s Hurricane Irma. They were perfect, as they’d been sitting in the sun for a few years and were nice and dry. I couldn’t fit them in the oven or in a pot to boil so I just repeatedly boiled water and poured it over them in the bathtub. I soaked it overnight for a few nights to get the excess tannins out. Obviously as my sanitization process wasn’t perfect, I ended up with a surprise. A really cool and rare red algae, Thorea hispada. Looks like brown spaghetti. I’ve taken a lot of pride in it over the years (and I’ve even sold it) so this Mystery Snail experience was a roller coaster for me.

So, I had a second tank set up, a 10 gallon housing a betta and some mystery snails. Unfortunately, they eventually sneakily laid eggs in an area I didn’t see and they hatched. In the end I had about 15 mature mystery snails and I took care of them, made them snail food gummy bears and such. But as time went on, I consolidated my tanks and moved my stuff from the smaller tank into my bigger tank. So now my large tank, which previously only had bladder snails, small ramshorns and nerites, got about 15 Mystery Snails.

I didn’t notice at first. It was slow. I had to feed the Mystery Snails a LOT. They produced a lot of waste and I had to put a lot of food in. Slowly my glass became covered in green algae (which really annoyed me, as the tank had been pristine for years) and MY THOREA HISPADA WAS DISAPPEARING. Eventually I found the little criminals slurping up my brown spaghetti as they cruised along. They were destroying my good algae and introducing bad algae! As you can see in the “just after” photo, they ate almost all of it.

I didn’t intend to kill them. But admittedly, I did reduce feedings greatly to manage the algae. I figured they had plenty of green algae to eat. Turns out the bastards don’t eat the ugly algae, just the pretty kind. They all went on a hunger strike and died.

And now my lovely Thorea hispada has recovered! What a relief! I was worried that it would be fragile and never return, but it’s resilient. I believe it sucks all the excess nutrients from the water because all the green algae is gone entirely again.

What did I learn?

– mystery snails destroy all your pretty things and give you ugly things in return, which they refuse to eat!

– Thorea hispada is very resilient

– I won’t be having mystery snails again