I have a 55 gallon tank that had 3 mystery snails until recently. They were all between 1-1.5 inches, and I have the tank pretty well sealed up where there aren't any gaps larger than about a quarter inch. One of my mysteries died a couple weeks ago, but the other two were looking healthy. Anyway, I went on vacation recently and left my wife at home to take care of the aquarium. She fed them all daily and swears she never left the top open. However, for the last 5 days, I haven't been able to find any more than 1 mystery snail. The one missing was actually my largest. I've looked everywhere around the tank, just in case it had escaped, but I haven't found, or smelled, any evidence of it. I guess it's possible that it crawled up into one of my aquascaping fake rocks and got stuck, but that would be odd , since they've lived over 3 months without doing that prior to this. I guess I have two other culprits. We have a 55 lbs dog would could have eaten it had it crawled out and died. We also had a cleaning service come to the house when I wasn't home, but I have a hard time imagining them finding a 1.5 inch snail on our floor without realizing that it came from the aquarium or at least telling us about it (they once notified me of dead stink bugs on my window sill). As of now though, I'm completely stumped. I've had fish completely disappear before, but I just assumed they were eaten by the rest of the fish. I never thought I'd lose complete track of a snail though.
Missing mystery snail
- Thread starter Drewbacca
- Start date
I have a Tetra PF 60 HOB filter and a Fluval 407 canister filter. I checked in the HOB compartment. I think the most likely thing that happened is it crawled out, died, and was eaten by my dog. I can't think of anything else that would have happened. I haven't found a dead snail anywhere, and I heard that they smell awful, so I can't imagine it still being somewhere hidden in my den. I still don't know how it would have gotten out, as there is a plastic flap on the back of my glass hood that I cut to fit all of my tubing and filters to keep it sealed off. Maybe my wife accidentally left the top open one day.
In other news, it looks like a baby ramshorn snail and a Malaysian trumpet snail snuck in on my latest plant shipment, so my snail population remains intact. Hopefully only one of each of those won't result in babies.
In other news, it looks like a baby ramshorn snail and a Malaysian trumpet snail snuck in on my latest plant shipment, so my snail population remains intact. Hopefully only one of each of those won't result in babies.
MTS are parthogentic livebearers. If you have one, you will have babies. But, they only reproduce to the level of food, and are great for stirring up substrate, so keep a tidy tank and you won't have issues.
Snails with operculums only smeel bad if the operculum is open. Some will die and 'seal in', if it'd dry. So...no stink. But either way, agree, it's likely the dog got it. I'm always surprised that my cats didn't take care of jumpers...ingrates.
Snails with operculums only smeel bad if the operculum is open. Some will die and 'seal in', if it'd dry. So...no stink. But either way, agree, it's likely the dog got it. I'm always surprised that my cats didn't take care of jumpers...ingrates.