Small White Things On Glass

They don't look like to be a moving organism. they look stationary. almost like eggs. I'm guessing not fish eggs. prob some parasite. who knows. they seem to be a bunch all over the tank.

just took a quick photo with my cell phone.


they dont look like snail eggs either

Do you have Olive Nerites?

Do you have Olive Nerites?

hmm i do have one snail. i will take a pic of him.

Edited by bumpylemon, 17 May 2010 - 02:36 PM.

after a closer look at a pic. its possible thats him.

i found this pic

those are definately little snails... I would know.. have a tank full of 10,000... LOL

those are definately little snails... I would know.. have a tank full of 10,000... LOL

haha i shall scream with joy...my first spawn!! haha. now are the actually fertilized? i took some more pictures of the snails. it even laid eggs on my other snail.
i think my water is wrecking the shell of this one...hmm my other ones shell is fine.





2 pics were huge and didnt resize. ill re-upload them

Edited by bumpylemon, 17 May 2010 - 05:44 PM.

Yup, those are nerite eggs. And unfortunately no, there is no easy way to hatch/rear babies. Not that I've heard anyway.

Yup, those are nerite eggs. And unfortunately no, there is no easy way to hatch/rear babies. Not that I've heard anyway.

but are they already fertilized? looks like they will be be darter food. how long before they hatch?

from what i have read, nerite snails require 100% salt water to hatch, so I would say no, not fertilized.

There's another post on these, entitled "Breeding Neritia" I think. I never did figure out how to get them to hatch.

Not sure what the cause of the shell erosion is either, but all the Nerites I've found in the wild (4 total) had a similar degree to what I see on yours. Ones I've seen in pet stores don't have it for some reason.

I'm guessing your your water is low in Ca+Mg hardness. Olive nerites do better in harder water. Eggs can hatch in fresh (IF fertile) but the planktonic larvae need to drift downstream into saltwater to develop (similar to Amano shrimp and many gobies).

If it's snails you want, I've got a couple kinds of pond snail that turned up in weeds or whatever. For that matter, you must see them yourself when you scoop for banded sunnies. Pretty much all I'm doing.

I like pond snails. They do eat algae but not efficient enough to be a primary algae control. Their number one task, which they excell at, is to clean up dead and dying vegetation in a heavily planted tank. Fast growing plants slough off spent leaves in large number. This can account for the bulk of some heifty mulm loads which look ugly, clog filters and can decay to detriment of H2O quality.
Snails convert it to nice little pellets which settle and siphon well.
The larger of the pond snails also likes meat and can be counted on to round up any frozen blood worms etc which get missed. This alone earns their keep IMO. Nothing nastier than a fuzzy old brine shrimp rotting in a corner.
I suspect the snails sustained my banded and blackbanded sunnies during some lean times and have seen a banded sunny consume an entire large pond snail egg mass. Matter of fact, when the giant water beetle and the scorpion wiped out all the adult snails, no recruits survived the sunnies and the bio-cube went snail free
As you know, darters love snails and it's fun to watch 'em go to work. My saltwater butterflyfish positively glows when I break up a few pond snails for him. You can just tell he thinks they're yummy.

I rarely have trouble with the snails, but....

In one tank I had a bazillion pointy snails which lived in the substrate. I don't think they were wild, I think they were on plants I traded for. At first I liked them. They look like perriwinckles and they stay out of sight. Eventually they had some kind of population explosion [no idea what changed] and predictably, they swarmed, then crashed, leaving the tank a stinky mess. No losses thankfully but some quick water changes were needed.

The meat loving pond snails I like so much seem to have developed a taste for java fern. I have some very old fern which I've nursed for ever and they eat holes in it. When it gets bad, I thin 'em out big time [the snails] and forget about it for a few months.

Recently I'm pretty sure I caused my more timid male blackbanded sunfish to abandon his tiny inadequate nest long enough for a squadron of pond snails to get in and vacuume it dry. At least they were in there doing something.
Apparently if the males stay alert, the snails don't get in as they've had at least two successful batches.

Hmmm, so pond snails eat Enneacanthus eggs? Are the pond snails you saw raiding the nest "left-handed" (Physa, Physella) or "right-handed" (Lymnaea)? The pointy snails in your gravel were probably Melanoides tuberculata the livebearing Malaysian trumpet snail ("MTS")

Hmmm, so pond snails eat Enneacanthus eggs? Are the pond snails you saw raiding the nest "left-handed" (Physa, Physella) or "right-handed" (Lymnaea)? The pointy snails in your gravel were probably Melanoides tuberculata the livebearing Malaysian trumpet snail ("MTS")

I don't know for a fact they ate eggs. I never saw eggs. This is the smaller, meeker male and only gets a tiny corner of the tank but was very faithful to a little hollow in the gravel. He is so skittish and his tiny little hollow is so sheltered, it's impossible to look close without sticking your face right in his. I finally did that and he freaked, bounced off the glass and didn't return. Next time I looked there were a cluster of snails right where the eggs would be, if there ever were.
The larger male claims 4/5 of the tank and scoops out nice big hollows with steep banks, very lepomis looking actually. He guards it well and I suspect both successful broods were his.

One thing for sure those snails make short work of all frozen meaty foods. I think eggs would just be an appetizer for these guys.
What do you mean about right or left handed?

Hold the shell with spire pointing upward and aperture facing toward you. Is the aperture on the right (Lymnaea and most "normal" snails) or on the left (Physella, lightning whelk, and a few other weirdos).

What do you mean about right or left handed?