I’ve had freshwater tanks since childhood and became a more serious hobbyist in the last ten years. My current tank is over two years old, 10 gal, so stable that it’s at the point I barely have to touch it anymore.
I’ve never had this happen before, though: sudden +1 baby snail. I have just two other snails that were carry-overs from a previous tank, but they don’t look anything like the new guy, so my instinct is not to assume that they suddenly decided to start reproducing for the first time.
So, if that’s true… where did this guy come from?? I’m not complaining, just surprised haha.
Posted by mkkm0593
1 Comment
That is a malaysian trumpet snail, and it either hitched a ride on something you have added to the tank like plants or driftwood or anything that has been in another tank before your tank, or, if you got any of your gear, gravel or anything in the tank second hand, it may have been there all along from when you got it set up.
MTS are a bit different from many of the other “pest” snails, as they are nocturnal, and spend most of their time burrowing under the substrate (which is why you may have had some all along without knowing). They help aerate the substrate and convert uneated fish food and fish poop into mulm, and are overall beneficial (I have added them to my tanks on purpose). They are scavangers, but with more carnivorous tendencies than many other aquatic snails, and will, among other things, eat the eggs of other pest snails. They will also eat fish eggs if they find them, but unless you are aiming to breed something rare and exotic where every egg counts.. the snails are not actualloy that good at eating them all. The MTS themselves do not lay eggs, and will give birth to live mini-me snails.
…edit to add, they are almost impossible to eradicate without using chemicals. They will survive just about anything else. I once had to tear down a tank and put all the gravel in a heap on some old newspaper in the garage to dry out. Forgot all about it, found it bone dry a few months later when I was setting up a different tank, put the dry old gravel in the new tank… BOOM – MTS snails.