Pipe Dream: Plants and an Apple Snail?

Thusly John Thomas Spake Unto All:

Thanks... this is definitely Pomacea bridgesii... and it's also a living
lawnmower.

Sorry, I doubt, very strongly, you've got bridgesii if it eats living
plants. Very, very, strongly indeed.

Mean_Chlorine wrote:

Thanks... this is definitely Pomacea bridgesii... and it's also a
living lawnmower.

Sorry, I doubt, very strongly, you've got bridgesii if it eats living
plants. Very, very, strongly indeed.

Yeah, I second that. To determine what kinds I had, I spent at least
several hours doing minute comparisons of my snails to the rotating 3D
images at applesnail.net. They really are hard to tell apart, and the
stores that sell them rarely know the difference.


--
Eric Schreiber
www.ericschreiber.com

Mean_Chlorine wrote:
Thusly John Thomas Spake Unto All:


Thanks... this is definitely Pomacea bridgesii... and it's also a living
lawnmower.


Sorry, I doubt, very strongly, you've got bridgesii if it eats living
plants. Very, very, strongly indeed.


No reason to be sorry, its not like anyone died here, but I'm starting
to wonder if it really is canaliculata myself.

Aside from being a lawnmower-
1) It has yellow spots on the siphon, but not as many on the mouth as
some of the shots of Pomacea bridgesii I've seen on the web.

However-
1) I've never seen it devouring plants. It's currently in an all plastic
tank. (Which is why I posed my original question) I've only oberved it
hogging all the fish food. It's more like a composter than a lawnmower.
2) It recently laid eggs, which looked like the bridgesii moreso than
the canaliculata egg masses. (At least by the pictures on applesnail.net)

This sort of thing is what makes keeping fish interesting for me. The
surprising part is that so far, the inverts (snails and shrimp) have
been a lot more interesting than the fish. :-) After 3 months, none of
the roughly 4 dozen fish I've purchased have died, gotten sick, or made
babies. OTOH, I've had shrimp get sick, croak, make babies, watched
snails kill each other and lay eggs. The snails are without question the
most aggressive things in the tank.

"John Thomas" wrote in message
...
Mean_Chlorine wrote:
Thusly John Thomas Spake Unto All:


Thanks... this is definitely Pomacea bridgesii... and it's also a
living lawnmower.


Sorry, I doubt, very strongly, you've got bridgesii if it eats living
plants. Very, very, strongly indeed.


No reason to be sorry, its not like anyone died here, but I'm starting
to wonder if it really is canaliculata myself.

Aside from being a lawnmower-
1) It has yellow spots on the siphon, but not as many on the mouth as
some of the shots of Pomacea bridgesii I've seen on the web.

However-
1) I've never seen it devouring plants. It's currently in an all
plastic tank. (Which is why I posed my original question) I've only
oberved it hogging all the fish food. It's more like a composter than a
lawnmower.
2) It recently laid eggs, which looked like the bridgesii moreso than
the canaliculata egg masses. (At least by the pictures on
applesnail.net)

This sort of thing is what makes keeping fish interesting for me. The
surprising part is that so far, the inverts (snails and shrimp) have
been a lot more interesting than the fish. :-) After 3 months, none of
the roughly 4 dozen fish I've purchased have died, gotten sick, or made
babies. OTOH, I've had shrimp get sick, croak, make babies, watched
snails kill each other and lay eggs. The snails are without question
the most aggressive things in the tank.


I used to have a customer who would come in to buy the occasional live
plant as a treat for her snail (which was the size of her fist). The
tropical fish had long died, but the single remaining snail was a great
source of entertainment with all its antics. The customer had no
interest in adding more fish or anything else. The snail had its routine
and they didn't want to mess with that. Its usual diet was a leaf of
Romaine lettuce (yes, an entire leaf). There can be a lot of
entertainment in shrimps, snails, frogs and plants.
--
www.NetMax.tk

John Thomas wrote:

1) I've never seen it devouring plants. It's currently in an all
plastic tank.

Bear in mind that its behavior with plastic plants has nothing to do
with how it will treat live plants. While snails respond well to
chemical signals (mine always seemed to know when, and where, I'd
dropped their food) they probably lack the brain power required to
equate a plastic ornament with a live plant.

I think your plan to buy some cheap plants is the best approach. Try to
get very healthy plants, though, as most snails will eat dying leaves
and such.

I've only oberved it hogging all the fish food. It's more like
a composter thana lawnmower.

That sounds like a bridgesii.

This sort of thing is what makes keeping fish interesting for me. The
surprising part is that so far, the inverts (snails and shrimp) have
been a lot more interesting than the fish.

My bettas are the most interesting critters I've got, though the tank
full of bluegills I very stupidly set up may beat them - very
personable and entertaining fish!

But yeah, I agree that the inverts are very cool. Next time I hit a pet
store I plan on restocking my ghost shrimp population. I gave up on the
apple snails because mine were breeding out of control and tank
maintenance was becoming a nightmare. But they were pretty groovy. I
even had some hydra at one point, which I found really interesting.


--
Eric Schreiber
www.ericschreiber.com

Thusly John Thomas Spake Unto All:

I know this is a silly, wildly unrealistic, question, but I have to ask
anyway...

Is there by any chance a plant I could put in my tank that the Apple
Snail wouldn't devour completely in a day?

Get the right species of apple snail (Pomacea bridgesii instead of P.
canaliculata) and you can keep it with any plant you wish - it's safe
with plants.

If you've already got canaliculata... well, I don't know of any plant
they won't eat.

All you ever wanted to know about apple snails:
http://www.applesnail.net/content/main.htm

My 'Apple Snail' is definitely Pomacea bridgesii. It's very aggressive
with respect to plants, plucking away at the plastic plants in the tank,
and chowing down on any green material instantly. (Peas, Algae Wafers,
Spinach, Brocolli, Zucchini, etc) Every time I do a water change in the
tank, Petunia is out there grinding away on the plastic just to make
sure nothing has changed. Petunia's favorite tactic is to park its foot
over the fishes' food, hold the food in its labia and box out the fish.
It'll hold algae tablets by the edge and rasp away with its radula while
spinning it with its foot, like it was a corn cob.

BTW, the AppleSnail site is great, isn't it?

Mean_Chlorine wrote:
Get the right species of apple snail (Pomacea bridgesii instead of P.
canaliculata) and you can keep it with any plant you wish - it's safe
with plants.

If you've already got canaliculata... well, I don't know of any plant
they won't eat.

All you ever wanted to know about apple snails:
http://www.applesnail.net/content/main.htm

On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 18:26:09 -0800, John Thomas wrote:

I know this is a silly, wildly unrealistic, question, but I have to ask
anyway...

Is there by any chance a plant I could put in my tank that the Apple
Snail wouldn't devour completely in a day?

I'm asking on the outside chance there's some pleasant plant that grows
in low light (Duckweed), inhibits algae (Hornwort), and tastes bad to
snails (????).

Oh yeah, and it has to wash the dishes and take out the trash too. :-)




I had 4 adult Apple snail included with a plant order. One of the 4
liked to eat plants. My Clown Loaches liked all of the Apples, but
somehow 3 babies survived and I moved them to two tanks that didn't
have CLs. The 3 are doing fine and have not eaten any plants so far I
as can see.

dick