Snail Explosion

[cabrego]

Holy cow! I have been fighting cyano over the last week or so and one of my techniques in reducing it is to kill the lights for most of the day. I did this for two days this week and yesterday when I turned on the lights I noticed snails all over the glass. Today upon further inspection I noticed they all appear to be Astraea snails! I can't explain what caused the snails to lay eggs and I know nothing about how long they take to hatch, so it could have happed before I suppose.

 

This is very sprising since I have actually lost a couple of other species snails (maybe Astraea too) and I have noticed Astraea toppled over a whole lot more than ususual so I assumed they were stressed out. I have been slowly reaisng the alk by about 1 dkh pwer week over the last 3 weeks and dosing more calcium than usual. I guess they are not stresse out after all?! In any event, I here is a pic of what I shot today with the cam. We will see if they can survive my 6 line.

 

What do you think, are they Astraea?

[WaterDog]

  On 4/9/2010 at 10:25 PM, cabrego said:

We will see if they can survive my 6 line.

 

What do you think, are they Astraea?

I'm not sure if they're Astrea, but you shouldn't have a problem with the 6 line. I had baby snails (Stomatella I think) and the 6 line generally left them alone.

[Jan]

They look like "Collonista amakusaensis" snails aka mini turbos

http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/SwSnails/Collonista.php

[Coral Hind]

How big are they?

[cabrego]

Not sure if you noticed but the babies are actually on a full size momma snail. So they are about 1/8 inch wide at the most.

[Jan]

Oh, that looked like a rock. If they grow a point like Astrea snail then they're Astrea snails. They don't look like a Sundial or any other predacious snail, but if what you have in your system are Astrea, then I think it's safe to say they're probably Astrea snails. did you introduce anything new into your system?

 

 

  On 4/10/2010 at 12:06 AM, cabrego said:

Not sure if you noticed but the babies are actually on a full size momma snail. So they are about 1/8 inch wide at the most.

[Coral Hind]

I thought it was a rock too.

 

If they are only 1/8" I think they are the exact snails which Jan mentioned earlier. I have had them in my tanks and they stay pretty small. My six line never touched them that I know of.

[cabrego]

Here is another shot to get a bit better perspective..when they are on the glass they look like specs of coraline algae...

 

Edited April 10, 2010 by cabrego

[davelin315]

Colonista. You can see the typical banding that they have on their shell and note the rough texture.

[Chris-]

I thought they were on a rock too, lol.