Golden Apple Snail
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 | Amazon Price: $201.18 List Price: $19.95 |
 | Amazon Price: $19.95 |
 | Amazon Price: $14.95 |
 | Amazon Price: $8.95 |
The Golden Apple Snail is amphibious. While there is a sufficient level of dissolved oxygen in the water, they will hardly leave the water and will breathe by their gills.If the level of dissolved oxygen gets to low, the snails will go up to the surface and breathe with their lung (mostly by using its siphon, a tube that it extracts to the water surface). While filling their lung with air, the snails extract and contract their body, so that the pressure differences cause their lung to deplete and refill. These snails have the ability to cruse away from the aquarium, so a cover glass is a necessity, as they won't survive longer than a couple of days in dry conditions. These snails have a tendency to float around the water surface, "playing dead"- do not worry, they are not. The best way to tell your snail is dead is if it doesn't contract when you touch it or if the operculum (shell cover) is missing (mostly at that time, the shell will also be empty). Due to their liking of plant matter as food, most people recommend not to keep them in planted aquariums. On the other hand, these snails show that if well fed, they can be kept in planted aquaria almost without a problem (they have a tendency to eat Nymphaea sp. no matter how much you feed them). More and more these days, the Apple-Snails are getting quite popular as roommates for Siamese-Fighters and other fish housed in vases and jars, as they clean them from algae, eat excessive food and make the vase/jar easier to clean by siphoning the dirt on the bottom. This species has several color forms- from the Brown (Wild Type), through Striped-Brown to Yellow/Golden (Cultivated). It seems the Yellow/Golden variants are more popular and common in the trade.
The golden apple snail found in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay but it is Invasive species in Tropical-Asia and USA. They are Mainly plant-matter, in the aquarium will eat also uneaten fish foods and meaty foods such as dead fish corpses. Needs Calcium additions to its diet! This species requires an aquarium with slow water flow and good biological filtration, due to its tendency to pollute water quickly. It likes lots of vegetation, so water plants are essential. As this snail is fast growing, it needs calcium rich water, so it can grow with a healthy shell- the calcium is used as calcium-carbonate to create the shell, lack of calcium will cause the shell to be thinner and more susceptible to breaking and eventually, the snail will die. Temperature should be in range of 20-28oC (68-82.4oF/293-301oK). PH should be in range of 6.5-7.5, best at 7. Water hardness (GH and KH) isn't significant. Water should contain NO HEAVY METALS, as they are lethal to the snails!!!
This species, unlike most snails known to common people, is not androgynous but gonochoristic, It means it has males and female! females are mostly larger while males have a wider aperture (shell opening). There are more ways to determine the snail's sex, not all of them are 100% sure. At a temperature of 25oC (77oF/298oK), breeding is at maximum rate. The female lays its eggs above the water surface at a clutch containing about 200-600 eggs.These eggs will hatch within about 2-3 weeks, depending on temperature an humidity of the air (the air above the water surface should have high humidity)- thus, a glass cover on the tank is essential (water level should be about 5-7.5cm/2-3inch below the glass cover). The young snails are about 2.5mm (0.09inch) after hatching and immediately start eating; they will also need a constant supply of calcium (both in water and by food). Keeping the young snails with the adults might become a problem after a while, due to competition over food and calcium,so it is advisable to grow them separately. The young snails get to sexual maturity at the size of about 2.5cm (1inch).
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Hi eric.
They will be fine, you don't have nothing to worry about.
Is it hard to take care of them?
My Golden apple snails don't seem to do anything. I've had them for two weeks and they sit on their backs and occasionally peek out. Every now and then I'll flip them onto their bottoms but they just roll back onto their backs again.. I've 3 other 'Black apple snails' in the tank with 5 leopard danios and 4 guppies. Any idea to the cause of their lethargic behaviour?
I love my Golden Apple Snail! Both of the mystery snails I have had are very active, always roaming around. They seem to be much smarter than I ever though they would be. I will hand feed algae tablets to mine sometime, they come up to the top of the tank after a few minutes and munch away. When the tablets are dropped in they will eat the tablet while my shrimp clean their shells. One of mine is getting HUGE (walnut size, but when I first got her she was only quarter size,) she will soon need to be moved to another tank. Just make sure to look at you fish meds carefully if you need to treat a community tank, many have salts and metals in them that will kill your snail. I also put pieces of cuttlefish bone in my tank for added calcium for their shells. They eat the algae off of it, also getting some of the bone.
I bought two Apple snails today and have placed them in my tropical aquarium. One is fine but the other is just bobbing on the top of the water. I took it out to have a look, and all I can see is a hard bit on the bottom but cant see any movement. Do you think that the snail is dead? I was thinking of taking it back to where I bought it from x
Hi BlackVelvet
Try to give him some more time
two questions about golden mystery snails, i have two i picked up and have had many babies, that are now in a seperate tank, but someone said that they there slim might be harmful to yabbies (crawfish) i had one that died of no apparent reason, when he was sharing the tank with two. also the second question is, im having water problems all of a sudden, theres a brown-yellow algae or bacteria growing along the gravel, this tank is only three weeks after a water change and i was wondering if the snails also had something to do with it?
My Snail use to go all around the tank I loved to watch him work the past few days he just stays on the bottom I was thinking it was because I got more fish witch seem aggressive could that be why? Im almost ready to get rid of the 3 new fish I just got so he will be happy again.
i have a cluster of eggs for about three weeks and have not hatched yet how long shall i leave them they are above water.
Ho colin
they have a good chance to hatch in about week or so
good luck
Its easy, worth a try
I have 7 golden apple snails and 1 black,one got caught in the filter system thing even though i have covered it I pulled it off an now it has lost its antenna things, will they grow back, if so how long will it take?
just wanted to say that I'm so glad to have found your page, thankyou i will keep coming back
do apple snails actually eat cuttlefish,or do they absorb calcium from water
Hi Paul
Apple snails eats almost anything they will plants, regular fish food and more
Hey! I have 2 golden apple snail I've had for a few months now....one day I seen 1 riding the other and the next day I look in and there's eggs above water on the glass...these have been there for weeks and since then there is about 5 more sacks of eggs and no of them have hatched or made any improvement at all... I'm starting to think they will never hatch properly and that I may need to start scraping these eggs off of the wall if they r just gunna keep coming and sitting there makin my tank look weird with all these sacks on the walls lmao.....???
What is the sack with little grayish dots they leave behind? My snail has some on it and he leaves some on the all. It looks like it is in a spider web ?
Hi Rebecca
do you have a picture of that?
eric 2 years ago
wat will happen if there are gold fish do we sperate them till they are big