Thursday 17 November 2011

The Great Ramshorn Snail

There is still a lot of activity in ponds. We haven't had a frost yet and Pond Snails, water-lice and ponds skaters go about their lives as usual. This is a Great Ramshorn Snail, Planorbarius corneus, inhabitant of still or slow moving waters with a high calcium content and plenty of vegetation. Unlike land snails, Ramshorn Snail's eyes are at the base of their long tentacles. They graze algae and plants or feed on dead leaves. They are hermaphrodite, although they prefer to cross-fertilise one another. They will lay their gelatinous egg batches on the underside of leaves. I photographed it on the white bowl with some rain water.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi my name is elena
I own a great ramshorn snails and this morning i discovered 4 small egg sacks containing up to eight eggs in them. I looked it up on the internet and found out that they are not my goldfishes eggs but the snails - i don't know what to do to look after them after they have hatched and i don't really want to keep them anyway - do you have any advise for me?

Africa Gomez said...

Hi Elena. The eggs may or not hatch, as other animals in your tank may eat them, but if they do hatch you might have plenty of baby snails pretty soon. If you got your snail in an aquarium shop or from an aquarist friend please do not release your snails into the wild, as they might be a non-native species and cause trouble. You can always pass them to your friends. If you do not want any more snails you can wipe the egg cases off the aquarium side with some kitchen paper.