Moe and the Mysteries

This was Moe the day we got him.   He was small enough I think this photo was sitting on my finger.  


a month or so later.






And on to the mysteries - but a story first.  

I got delayed on posting any of this because my 4 year old daughter came down - at 6am (no I am not awake this early, I am STILL awake from yesterday morning!)  FREAKING OUT that her golden snail was "broken"  

Poor kid had come down to see this:  




I had given her golden snail an orange tums and well.... you can see it...  


That is a male, but for the sake of not having a mad daughter, it's a girl









this is my son's blue one, which is a female, but to keep from having an unhappy son, it's a boy.

I guess I don't torment my ivory one enough to have pictures and not sure on gender on that one yet.

Great photo's Kat!

Those are nice looking snails you got. I haven't seen that many people that love snails but they are very unique and a great pleasure to have in you fish tanks.

The kids like the snails and the plecos more than they like the fish mostly - odd kids! They are more interesting than I expected them to be.

I have some Adonis Pleco really cool

Mystery snails are waay cool!!

Its really cool when you have several mystery snails in a tank and they start laying eggs. They don't lay eggs in the water, but actually climb out of the water and place them a few inches above. Then after a while the babies fall into the water and fill up the tank quickly.

The broken shell is a sign that the pH is a bit low. Planted tanks tend to have lower pH levels naturally. Get a pH test kit to make sure it doesn't get too low for them. I try to keep my water close to a neutral 7 with either buffers or bakingsoda. But I also have trouble keeping livebearers. So the higher pH may not be ideal for the platies. Not sure what conditions are ideal for platies but I'm sure my tanks are not it. I find that snail shell will dissolve at different pH levels. Mysteries and rams horn will start at 6.5 or below. The common pond snails can tolerate much lower levels of around 6.0.

The blue and Ivory have about perfect shells, just my daughter's golden has been having issues. the PH is right around 7 in the tank. I am getting some egg clutches soon to hatch that will be in the baby tank.

Are the eggs above the water level? I've had them dry up before and never hatch. A little trick is to put an air stone directly below the eggs. The splashing will keep them moist and save you from having to splash them twice a day to keep from drying out.

eggs are being mailed so will set up a hatcher to float on the water

Well, hatching of clutch a success... and an excuse not to take down my 10 gallon tanks in the kitchen is totally normal right???? My blue also laid a clutch from her and my male golden snail on 9/13 so there should be some jades in there. Might be a little addicted to these.... If anyone is looking for some in the next few months let me know (and beyond then too!)

Wouldn't mind messing with some snails

about a month and I should be able to ID colors of the little guys from the first couple clutches

cool :p just let me know we can do some kind of trade

think there is any chance of cherry shrimp reproducing in a 10 gallon with baby mystery snails?  

Here's newborn picts of a couple of them.

Yah! as long as there is enough algae to eat there shouldn't be any trouble.

light purple stripe


ivory


dark purple stripe


golden

Nice snails

thanks, those ones are all right around marble sized

very hard to tell their size from the pics

moe

Golf ball size???

neogeo20041 wrote:Golf ball size???

yup, he should get to baseball size.

and the 4 cups of plants/veggies he ate last week should help him with that....

Very nice! You should start breeding hard to find invertebrates.

neogeo20041 wrote:Very nice! You should start breeding hard to find invertebrates.

confused