Mystery snail eggs & inverts journal

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

A mama shrimp taking care of her eggs.

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Buddies up near the surface during maintenance, just cleaning some leaves and driftwood for me.  💛💜

 

 

IDK why Romeo has so many [obvious] growth lines and Woodstock does not (?)

Edited November 26, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 11/24/2023 at 10:21 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

I found a baby MTS in the shrimp tank. That means…

it (more likely its parent) survived Prazi pro

& it survived No Planaria

Wow! That stuff is supposed to be fatal to snails.

They’re moving up the food chain. Soon snails will be keeping us humans in glass tanks and feeding Repashy. 😂

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Most adorable baffle came in for the Marina S10.

 

[Lennie]

On 11/26/2023 at 2:16 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Buddies up near the surface during maintenance, just cleaning some leaves and driftwood for me.  💛💜

 

 

IDK why Romeo has so many [obvious] growth lines and Woodstock does not (?)

That is also something I observe in some old mysteries. Who knows.

Romeo's freckles are adorable

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 12/2/2023 at 2:25 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Most adorable baffle came in for the Marina S10.

 

Phooey. The baffle was a hair off in the measurement. Msgd seller. This seller has always been awesome with customer service. I’m a repeat customer (& the baffle on my Marina 200 is perfect). Also, found a colony of shrimplets in the HOB. They were eating the stuff off the floss. All seemed quite healthy. The s10 is pretty simplistic, so it was easy to see them and just dump the HOB into the tank. COARSE PFS IS INSUFFICIENT for shrimplet safety. Previously I zip tied pantyhose over it, but this time I didn’t because I really needed to polish the water. The HOB was added to solve an issue with a lot of particulates (I believe calcium from foods) in the water column. The water is looking pretty decent now but I still prefer to have the baffle for next time.

Edited December 4, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

BREAKING NEWS! Kratos goes on a big adventure!

King Koopa nerite

For those just tuning in, this snail hibernates and/or filter feeds 90% of the time. If you are ever looking for cleanup crew, this guy ain’t it! 🤣 🥲

Edited December 5, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Caught a molt in progress! 

Had a time of it w/ the camera focus but I tried.

There are lots of shrimplets in the tank now! They are free swimming, and it’s obvious because they are clumsy little swimmers at first. ❤️

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Neat pattern on the wild female. Kinda marbled or something.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

It has been at least a month+ since I saw this!  

All my gold snails are now gone, but I still have one (old) magenta, Romeo, who has, um.. had the most physical activity of all the snails during his lifetime. 🤣 That just goes to show you, folks! Exercise extends one’s lifespan!  And he still “exercises” daily! 

This clutch confirms at least one of my new snail kids is a girl. 💜 I just don’t know which one yet. 🙂 I think 2 of the new snails are purple (vs magenta), as they don’t have that fuschia type hue like Romeo has. The other new snail is blue. Everybody has a black foot except Romeo.

 

Edited December 12, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[nabokovfan87]

On 12/11/2023 at 4:08 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

It has been at least a month+ since I saw this!  

I know... bit of a shocker... I feel like I want to get some nerites now.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Meanwhile in the wild tank…

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 12/5/2023 at 7:51 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

BREAKING NEWS! Kratos goes on a big adventure!

King Koopa nerite

For those just tuning in, this snail hibernates and/or filter feeds 90% of the time. If you are ever looking for cleanup crew, this guy ain’t it! 🤣 🥲

Kratos was adventuring again yesterday!  Nice to see the little dude. I put some Soilent Green powder in. The tank had a dash of bacter ae the other day too. I need to trim back some plants to allow some algae to grow for snails to eat. They are so tall they are covering most of the surface. Imagine that! Wanting to grow some algae! 🤣 I’ve seen the nerites in the food dish lately also. 

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 12/10/2023 at 11:42 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Caught a molt in progress! 

Had a time of it w/ the camera focus but I tried.

There are lots of shrimplets in the tank now! They are free swimming, and it’s obvious because they are clumsy little swimmers at first. ❤️

Nice catch! 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

It’s nice to see everyone has enjoyed their calcium wafers 💩 

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Christmas trees (broccoli) for shrimp

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

This gal is almost due.

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Apparently a slumber party

 

 

and tank “greeters” welcoming me

 

Edited January 4 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Just had to get this beautiful girl on video.

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

The Malaysian trumpet snail population has been ramping up in Geppetto’s tank. Not an issue. What could be a potential issue though, is that they are feeding from the surface. My guy has been careful about eating his food and not the snails (which are the same size as his pellets), but I do worry that he might eat one by mistake and have a blockage. As well as his need to breathe from the surface. I want that to be easy for him. Here are some photos of the surface feeding snails:

So folks, my lifelong dream of having a gravel made of MTS will not come to fruition after all. Hence, I removed the snails from the tank and siphoned the substrate, which was loaded with decayed catappa, which the MTS love. All (known) MTS were moved to my Walstad jar, which is currently having a bit of an algae problem. So, win win for all involved. 

The siphoning was so messy with the broken down catappa, so I used a paste/powder type clarifier product suggested by @Guppysnail along with a 10g HOB and floss. Just for fun I took photos every 15 minutes.

 

Then I took the HOB off after an hour since Geppetto doesn’t like current. I added a rooibos organic tea bag to the tank to bring tannins back in, as well as an SMALL piece of catappa leaf for the shrimps. When they eat that, they can have another one, but I want to control the organics in the tank right now. The tank should be clear by morning.

Also here are some juvenile shrimps that were born in the tank. Geppetto doesn’t pay any attention to the shrimp anymore.

 

And then a bonus pic (from the other tank) of Cadet going to town on some broccoli.

Edited January 12 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

It is the next morning, and as you can see the water is nice and clear. (There is glare, so I don’t know how well you can tell).

The particles became heavier and settled. I plan to do an additional tea bag because there are not enough tannins yet, to my liking.

Heres what the trumpet snails are helping me out with in my jar. It is a fluffy hair algae. I could reduce light, but let’s see what they can accomplish first.

Edited January 12 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[nabokovfan87]

On 1/12/2024 at 3:50 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

reminds me of the Dan's video about algae eaters.  He takes a clump of that kind of algae and just shows how fast different species can "handle it".  It's interesting because different things can handle different surfaces and different things can handle different forms of algae better.  String algae is almost always a shrimp thing for me just because of their anatomy.

Edited January 13 by nabokovfan87

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 1/12/2024 at 7:39 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

String algae is almost always a shrimp thing for me just because of their anatomy.

Mine don’t eat it, they clean off what’s on it. I’m always fine tuning my shrimp tank light to control it, or it tries to take over. I think I heard a comment on that in a video as well, how (neo) shrimp look like they’re eating it but they just want the biofilm, etc from its surface.

But the type of hair algae in my shrimp tank (looks like hair) and is different than the fluffier hair algae in my jar. When I swirl the toothbrush in the jar and then remove it, it looks like slime (mucous consistency) is hanging off the bristles. Gross, but accurate, reference. The stuff that comes out of the shrimp tank is like a clump of hair and you can tear it apart with similar force and effect as tearing a cotton ball.

Jar algae from a few weeks ago when it was worse. I manually removed some. It came back.

See, it looks hair-algae-ish but vs the shrimp tank, just “different”.

Shrimp tank:

I will look for that video. It sounds like a fun watch!

Edited January 13 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[nabokovfan87]

On 1/13/2024 at 1:57 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Mine don’t eat it, they clean off what’s on it. I’m always fine tuning my shrimp tank light to control it, or it tries to take over. I think I heard a comment on that in a video as well, how (neo) shrimp look like they’re eating it but they just want the biofilm, etc from its surface.

But the type of hair algae in my shrimp tank (looks like hair) and is different than the fluffier hair algae in my jar. When I swirl the toothbrush in the jar and then remove it, it looks like slime (mucous consistency) is hanging off the bristles. Gross, but accurate, reference. The stuff that comes out of the shrimp tank is like a clump of hair and you can tear it apart with similar force and effect as tearing a cotton ball.

Fun! 😂

Very good and interesting point. Moss is that way too. Very good because it attracts things and the shrimp can "brush it off".