"Mystery Snail"?

[jb_lyndon]

I've heard that mystery snails are just that, a mystery.
LFS's label them "mystery" because they don't know what species they actually are. Apparently some species eat plants while others eat only decaying plant matter (is this correct?). What are your experiences with mystery snails? Wondering about the likelyhood that we may have, by chance, possibly acquired a leaf eater. In 5 days he's been hanging out on both plants (unsure of plant species... LFS guy said maybe a bacopa and either a wisteria or rotala). We have not however noticed any damage to the plants so I'm hoping that we have a luckily proper mystery snail.
What do you think?

[OrionGirl]

Mystery snails are actually apple snails. There are some great resources--one of my often used ones is: http://www.applesnail.net/

HTH

[TKOS]

The plant munchers tend to get right to work. If your has been hanging out for a couple of days with little to no damage then I would suggest that you are going to have a nice plant friendly snail. MAke sure to throw him some veggies every so often.

[snakeskinner]

what color is it? It appears that the yellow ones are more likely to be the plant eaters from the posts I've seen on here. I know my yellow one will eat every plant in the tank as fast as he can. My black one however rarely eats plants unless that's all he can find. KYle

[Gulp]

Originally posted by jb_lyndon
What are your experiences with mystery snails?

The lesson I recently learned about large mystery snails is that my oscar likes to suck them out of their shells....... :eek:

[dethjam316]

Originally posted by snakeskinner
what color is it? It appears that the yellow ones are more likely to be the plant eaters from the posts I've seen on here. I know my yellow one will eat every plant in the tank as fast as he can. My black one however rarely eats plants unless that's all he can find. KYle it has nothing to do with the color. it has to do with the species. this is about the 4th snail post this week, and the first time oriongirl beat me to posting the applesnail.net link;). go there, do some research, and you'll see the difference between species...and you'll also see that each species has a variety of color morphs.

basically, if you got your snail at a big chain store, it's very likely the bridgesii species that tends to not eat plants unless they're (a) really soft, delicious plants or (b) decaying or dying plants. these are among the smaller apple snails. there are exceptions of course, but all 3 of mine that are this species don't touch my plants at all. if your snail exceeds 3"-- watch out. i have one of another species that's about 4", purchased at a quirky lfs, that will annihilate all plants.

[snakeskinner]

I wasn't saying it IS the color, only stating that it seems the plant eaters end up being yellow ones putting most of the experiences people on here have posted. Also, the yellow ones are a different species from the black ones in the articles I've read on the apple snail family and they tend to get larger as well. As to how to distinguish which genus they are, I havn't found that yet and as you stated, color morphs seem to add to the problems. I bought both mine from Petsmart at the same time, in the same tank. It seems everywhere I've been locally carries snails that look identical although some stores list them differently. Of the posts I've read on this forum, most people have ran into the same experiences that I have; the yellow ones get larger and eat more plants, the black ones tend to be smaller and less of a plant eater. I have no idea as to the number of places that breed and sell these snails for wholesalers but it seems a large quantity are of the same genus that are being sold across the chain stores at least. Kyle