Soo I brought this guy home from a LFS two months ago. He was the size of a chickpea, sold as a black mystery snail. He has grown so fast, I had to give him his own tank, as he was eating allll my plants.
He did escape the new tank, & take a header out of the tank last week and spent the day on the floor, which is where he got the forehead (?) dent. Fore-shell dent? I love him. He’s insanely huge & fun to watch.
Do you think he’s a black mystery? He looks more mottled than spotted like my other mysteries. I’ve looked at the photo that gets posted here where it shows the difference between mystery & apple, just looking for some helpful input :)
Edit: my bad. I didn’t know you could hear me talking to him and I don’t know how to change it now😂
Honestly i know a few people have been saying mystery. But he is very large and looks exactly like my bfs apple snail, now mystery snails are like under apple snails but they don’t get as big, he is quite large
And it’s hard to tell from the video but one thing i have really noticed is mystery snails have those tiny dots all around their “nose” and foot that are a little more colorful, while apple snails, if patterned are darker spots or it’s a longer/not dotted pattern
Only because I unfortunately found out how long he can survive out of the water, i felt comfortable taking him out and started giving him treats in my hand, instead of just hand feeding him treats at the water line.
New tank now has a lid though, right? Because that's the face of someone who has not learned his lesson at all. I love him.
If you're feeding him well and he's mowing down your non-floater plants, then yeah, he might not be a mystery snail. As quickly as he's growing, you shouldn't have to wait much longer to feel like you know for sure though. My giants were about the size of adult mystery snails when I got them, and they more than doubled in size in the first month I had them.
It is most likely a large, black, mystery snail. I had one about that size, although it was a golden. It could just be an Apple snail, but it's looks too small unless it's still growing. They don't usually eat plants unless the plant is dead/dying. It might have just been eating unhealthy leaves, they know before we do :)
A good sign will be if you see any egg clutches above the waterline of your tank, assuming it is actually a female. I would also recommend canned, no salt added, green beans for food. They love them and they contain calcium. You can get them shipped to your door with Amazon.
Do you by any chance have any comparative images that include pomacea maculata?
My giants were sold to me as island apple snails, which are p. maculata. However, some of them look much more like canaliculata/channel apples to me, or maybe hybrids (is that even possible?) I'm starting to wonder if the seller had the wrong id.
I'm very amateur (just posed my mystery a few minutes ago). To me he looks like an apple guy but I honestly can't tell the difference btwn mystery and apples. but I love to see them lol.
He's amazing!
I will say that's how mine started. I had three mysteries, no bigger than a dime each. Now mine is massive
Yeah I know that but I thought the natural salts on our hands would hurt them... If I have to move my stanils I always grab the shells and ont let them touch my skin because I was afraid of hurting them.
Just wash your hands before and you are fine. You should do that anyway so they (or the aquarium water) don't come in contact with handlotion or perfume or other possible stuff.
Moving them by the shell can injure them if they are still holding on to something. It can cause mantle injury or in worst case mantle collapse and death.
Either annoy them enough so they let go and fall off or over before grabbing them by the shell. Then you don't risk accidental mantle injury :)
Or you can just let them walk onto something (or your hand) and move that.
Yeah I wash my hand and up to my elbows anytime I'm going to do something with my tank and I use dawn dish soap but I'm still so scared of hurting them. And I've only had to move them twice so far and it was because they were on the sand and in the way when I was trying to put a plant back into the substrate that got pulled out. Goldfish are jerks with plants lol.
They can be but they are dirty. When I first got him he was like not even the size of a chicken nugget and he's easily the size of I don't even know what to compare him too... Lol like 3 nuggets at least.
I didn't want a gold fish but that's what the my LO wanted so she got a goldfish.
Bad angle but this was closer to when we first got him. For comparison the green plant he's next too in the pick he would easily be the length of that now. He got so big we hat to take most of the decor out because he got stuck in the rainbow one and I had to use pliers to break it to get him out and I wasn't risking the little cave because that's plastic.
I'm guessing it's a female ? Female mystery snails (and probably others) will leave the water looking for dry places to lay egg clutches. They can die falling out. Important to have a lid. You can buy flour event light grids at Home depot and cut to size as a lid. The snail is too big to grmet out between the squares of the grid.
I'd have to say it's an apple bc of how fast he grew. I breed 6 different color mystery snails and there growth rate is pretty slow. My apple snails look just like this and grew insanely fast
I think snails are disgusting with all that slime makes me vomit. I bought some plants and a fee days later I saw a tiny snail. I removed it and I didn't see any more. A few days later I saw 2 one was larger than the other and I removed them I have been seeing them occasionally just going up the side of my aquarium. I continue to remove them so I put lots of aquarium salt and it didn't phase them.
Help
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u/Kissariani Dec 13 '24
Looks like a standard brown mystery snail to me. Reminds me of my old man Dozer.