in article , Dark Phoenix at
wrote on 5/12/04 12:23 AM:


"Chris Oinonen Ehren" wrote in message
...
I wouldn't call them mystery snails, since that term is usually associated
with apple snails, and I doubt an apple snail (usually about the size of a
cherry or bigger) came in on your plants without you knowing.

Regarding your stowaway snail: Why don't you just squish it? As you
become
aware of more of them, you can squish them, too.

Sounds like you are worried about them being carriers of some kind of
disease--if that is the case it is too late for removing those plants to
do
you any good. (Can an animal carry parasites while still in the egg?) I'd
wait and see if any more snails appear. That might have been the only
one.
You don't want to tear everything apart "just in case"--that won't do your
fish any good.

I believe there is some kind of chemical dip you can use on new plants so
that no snails/eggs survive on them, but I can't remember the name of it.
Might want to use something like that in the future.


Hmm... we know what apple snails are; why are they called mystery snails?
And no, these aren't apples or ramshorns.

I've seen various Apple Snails called that for twenty years or more. I
suspect its because it is really tricky to tell within the genus what
species you have, so rather than try to say "I'm selling Pomacea Bridgesii"
and then find out they're really selling Pomacea Canalculata they would say
"I'm selling mystery snails". If you google "mystery snails" you'll see
they still use that term for apples of all kinds. Better to say "Pond
Snails" or stowaways or something.


I do squish them- well, I take the out and toss them to the chickens. Little
escargot treat. I'm just tired of thinking I've got the tank de-eviled, and
then finding... more of them. Are these things born pregnant??? Have babies
while they're still invisible to the naked eye??? Until I found out they
could carry flukes, and thus be a probable cause of the bacterial infection
I'm still fighting after two months, I was leaving them to cruise the algae.
They made neat patterns in it.

Hmm. What kind of flukes? I suspect that snails are infected after
hatching, rather than being laid infected. All I've been able to find out
with Google indicates that snails have to have fluke eggs available to pick
up with their food in order to be infected. Sounds like they aren't hatched
already infected.

No, snails can't reproduce when they're still invisible. (Somebody asked
that). But their eggs are really hard to spot, and newly hatched snails
are hard to spot. But if the snails are so small they can't be easily seen,
they can't have been hatched for more than a few days. So if you got your
plants in the pet store they hatched out at the pet store, and can't pick up
flukes unless they were hatched in an infected tank. If you got them at the
lake (or pond, or creek) you might still have a problem.

What is the genus species name on the flukes you are worried about? It
would be easier to find helpful articles if we knew that.
--
Chris