Now another accidental invertebrate...farm

[knifegill]

I had a snail in a little acrylic hex tank as food for my raphael. Apparently, she made babies. The tank has been sitting in a corner, slowly dehydrating, and occasionally accepting tidbits of waste from other tanks. I went to clean it out just now and there are about ten new ramshorn snails in there. Works for me. My new Red Macro can eat them, and my Oscar might, too. But what to do with them right now?

I know their water conditions must be terrible, so I didn't change it all at once. I just removed the waste and added a little bit of new water. Should I filter their water? I'm adding a small piece of eggshell now. I know how to feed them, but will they continue to reproduce and be healthy as is, without filtration?

side note: These guys are a total surprise and if I had any inkling about their existence I'd have done something for them a lot sooner...

 

[knifegill]

Well, I rigged up a filter using a UGF tube. It's got a new carbon cartridge on the top, an airstone in it, and nylon mesh stuffed into the bottom. It's just sort of dangling in the water, but it's upright enough that air is moving the right way. I figure I'll keep adding small amounts of fresh water over the next few days and then just do weekly w/c like my aquariums get.
They have an eggshell.
They refuse to eat pellets and algae wafers. Should I try leafy veggies?

Oh, there is one snail who seems to be narcoleptic. He'll crawl for awhile, then retract and fall over. A few seconds, he emerges and crawls some more. Is he sick or just unique?

All of the shells are thin and a few young dead were removed. They don't look as bad as I would expect for having eaten nothing but accidental food/waste and algae.

These are the offspring of a wild-caught pond snail. I had a few and kept the reddest one. These are her offspring.

Is there any point in adding a heater? I'd think not. It might speed up their metabolism and thin their shells...or something. Anybody know about this? They are pulmonary, so oxygen in the water isn't too important...

 

[Lupin]

Stick to sponge filter and keep the temperature at 74-76 degrees Fahrenheit. High temperature does encourage them to grow quickly but at the expense of their shells' thickness. I keep all my snails even the rescued Lymnaea stagnalis in a tank with temperature at 76 degrees Fahrenheit. They grow quite slowly but the shells are very thick.

Try feeding them snail jello, green peas or turtle sticks (for calcium). You can always add a tablet of Tums if you want to dose calcium for the little guys although Tums clouds the water but no harm is done by this effect anyway.

 

[knifegill]

Thanks. So the eggshell isn't enough?

 

[Lupin]

The eggshell can work but isn't nearly as effective as the calcium pills and snail jello. If you want to use the eggshell, remove the egg membrane which will rot and foul your tank water.

 

[knifegill]

Oh, yeah. I scrape all that stuff off before I bake them.