I've been having problems with my blue mysteries for a couple of months and couldn't figure out what was wrong... until now. At least I believe I have found the issue.
I had beautiful blue mysteries, that hatched in one of our tanks. I've sold a bunch and kept several to grow out. I've got them in almost all of our tanks. Some are now golf ball size with perfect shells. But some were developing cracks in the shells. And the crack just keeps growing until they die. Every where I've read online and seen similar pictures the cause was calcium deficiency. But since getting our first two mystery snails, I started getting Ken's vegetable sticks with calcium. I also put in cuttle bone and drop in 100% oyster shell calcium tablets occasionally. There's no way they were not getting enough calcium.
Well, something obvious that wasn't obvious at the time is that the mysteries having problems were in tanks with blue ramshorns.
I recently setup a new tank for some endlers and fire red shrimp. So I separated one of the mysteries with a bad shell to make sure he gets enough to eat and to see if that would help. Less than a week later and I look in the tank as I'm getting ready to do a small water change and I find what you see in the pic below. Except I found 6 of the BB size ones and about 8 of the tiny new born. They others were just too hard to pick up so I smashed them for the shrimp.
All of those apparently were INSIDE this one fairly young mystery snail. The babies possibly could have come from eggs on the outside of his shell but I inspected him pretty closely before putting him in that tank. I they were already hatched in the other tank and crawled inside this mystery since it's only been less than a week since he was moved. But the BB sized ones HAD to have been inside his shell because this new tank is bare, no substrate, new filter and this was the first time I've used this tank for anything.... first time it's had water in it.
The mystery is more active now. I can't tell yet if the crack is healing but hopefully it will start to repair itself.
I had beautiful blue mysteries, that hatched in one of our tanks. I've sold a bunch and kept several to grow out. I've got them in almost all of our tanks. Some are now golf ball size with perfect shells. But some were developing cracks in the shells. And the crack just keeps growing until they die. Every where I've read online and seen similar pictures the cause was calcium deficiency. But since getting our first two mystery snails, I started getting Ken's vegetable sticks with calcium. I also put in cuttle bone and drop in 100% oyster shell calcium tablets occasionally. There's no way they were not getting enough calcium.
Well, something obvious that wasn't obvious at the time is that the mysteries having problems were in tanks with blue ramshorns.
I recently setup a new tank for some endlers and fire red shrimp. So I separated one of the mysteries with a bad shell to make sure he gets enough to eat and to see if that would help. Less than a week later and I look in the tank as I'm getting ready to do a small water change and I find what you see in the pic below. Except I found 6 of the BB size ones and about 8 of the tiny new born. They others were just too hard to pick up so I smashed them for the shrimp.
All of those apparently were INSIDE this one fairly young mystery snail. The babies possibly could have come from eggs on the outside of his shell but I inspected him pretty closely before putting him in that tank. I they were already hatched in the other tank and crawled inside this mystery since it's only been less than a week since he was moved. But the BB sized ones HAD to have been inside his shell because this new tank is bare, no substrate, new filter and this was the first time I've used this tank for anything.... first time it's had water in it.
The mystery is more active now. I can't tell yet if the crack is healing but hopefully it will start to repair itself.
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