I've also added 2 red ramshorn snails to the tank. They add some extra colour and life, but..they also proliferate like crazy.
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| Ramshorn snail eggs on the glass. They almost exclusively lay eggs on the plants, though. |
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| This is how big the babies are, 3 weeks after I put the parents in the tank. They sure do grow fast. |
I also have small pond snails that probably came with my plants. I've started removing all the snail eggs that I can see from my tank, so I don't get a snail plague. But because I also feel bad about just throwing the eggs away, so I put them in a cup next to my window with salvina natans in it and give them small pieces of vegetable as food. I'm hoping that they will start proliferating less rapidly. If not, I'm thinking that I should get one of those cool assasin snails (Anentome helena). Would surely make things more interesting, but I'm not sure that my aquarium is big enough to keep one fed without completely destroying my population of other snails.
The mondo grass was starting to look bad, so I took it out of my aquarium and planted it with my sanseveria's. As compensation, I added a moss ball to my aquarium. They seem pretty neat, because they are actually algae, they should prevent other algae from growing by competing with them for nutrients. I've also read that fish sometimes nibble on it, which could help them survive the weekends, when I can't feed them.
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| My aquarium as it is now. Note the moss ball (right). |
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| Top view of my aquarium |
Beautiful pictures!
ReplyDeleteAt what age / size do the baby ramshorns obtain their adult coloration?
I have some hitchhikers that came in on a plant and they are currently between 2 and 5mm in diameter and have a leopard print on their shells. The shell base color is a tan / olive color and the larger snails seem to be lighter in color than the smaller ones (which are more reddish brown), with more noticeable spots. The foot color of all of them is a pinkish orange currently, and some are more pink/red than others.
Will they eventually go "golden" (yellow shell, pink foot) or are they destined to be brown?
If they stay olive / yellow I might keep them as they look quite pretty, however they're eating my water sprite plants down to the roots so I may have to remove them from my display somehow!
The ramshorn snails that I have seem to get their red coloration very soon, even when they're smaller than 1 mm in diameter. I'm not sure if yours will eventually change color when they get bigger, but I'd think that they will keep the color that they have now.
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