Nerite Snails

[Mustafa]

Here is some good info from another forum I belong to.
http://www.applesnail.net/phpBB2/viewto ... ght=nerite

The author is credible, so this isn't your typical post, and she shows her setup.

Did you notice she has not posted anything in that thread for 8 months? Not even after poeple requested updates? Big warning sign that something just isn't right with the whole story.

I'll tell you that I have done this experiment a few years ago and also thought that I had "baby nerites" after seeing veligers all over the place. But the "babies" never grew up. It turns out that the "babies" were some of the tiniest snail species around at 1-2 mm body size. Veligers have very exacting dietery requirements (phytoplankton) and just having a bunch of macroalgae in there and not doing water changes is not going to do it. The goby in there actually does not help but hurt the setup as it will gladly eat any kind of zooplankton floating in the water, including veligers (which are large enough to serve as food). The whole setup is just flawed.

This is likely to be another one of those never reported failure cases. For personal reasons (psychological) people tend to not report their failures. Especially, so called "experts" will act that way. A real expert would not have any issues reporting problems. If someone really bred these guys, you can be assured that there would be photos to prove it. And it's not like there aren't enough people trying all over the world.

So, as always, use a healthy dose of skepticism when confronted with such stories.

[badflash]

I'm sure that isn't the case here.

This isn't some gulf coast wacco. If you follow her posts she is usually spot on. She also has actually produced stuff that is usefull, like software that predicts the genetic outcome of breeding colored brigs (it works too). She also established the color standard for brigs snails that is used by most breeders as there isn't anything else. Don't sell her short. She is busy with her post graduate work, and as I'm sure you know, that can take away from other projects.

Here is what I am theorizing about these snails. They are natives of the estuaries and lay their eggs in the tidal areas that change rapidly in salinity. For the most effective hatch you need to vary the salt with the tides as they have evolve to deal with. I have demonstrated with my own population that they can go from frsh water to full salt in a day and come back just fine. They are not as tough as MTS, but come close. The larva also need to feed on living plankton. All of these things make it really tough for the hobbiest. In the areas I describe, you can collect these snails as tiny babies and virtually no where else.

This looks like a project for people who really want a challenge.

[Neonshrimp]

These are great snails, will take care of algae problems and they are very decorative.

In the areas I describe, you can collect these snails as tiny babies and virtually no where else.

Have you or any other member collected them from the wild? I would like to do this one day.

This looks like a project for people who really want a challenge.

I have board exams coming up so maybe after they are done

[Mustafa]

I'm sure that isn't the case here.

What isn't the case? That she might have failed and not reported it? Why are you so sure about that? You don't need to be a gulf coast "wacco" to have issues with failures. Most "normal" people actually do. Whatever she did with the colors of the brigs etc. has nothing to do with facing failures.

It's just common sense that someone who really has bred these animals would report it, even if it takes one or two pictures and a short post. Takes just a few minutes. You will find a few minutes in 8 months to do this no matter how busy you are. Looks like she had no problem making another 163 posts since she first posted the "Nerite Success" story.

When I look at a given setup/situation, I don't really care about the qualifications or reputation of the person. I use my common sense, experience and logic to evaluate the setup/situation. And I am telling you that no nerite snail veliger will make it to adulthood in that setup with no phytoplankton feedings and a hungry goby scouring the tank for zooplankton (which is what the snail veligers are). It's just not going to work. Would that work for shrimp larvae? No. So why should it work for snail veligers?

Plus, don't give people credit automatically just because there is nobody around to correct them. After I showed you how to acclimate MTS to full saltwater (which at that point nobody in the hobby had a clue about...and I mean nobody, snail "expert" or not) and you went and talked about it in the snail forum, she did not believe it was possible that they could live in saltwater and then proceeded to tell you that if it is possible that they should be acclimated over months. (It only takes a few days...just like in nature). All it would have taken to not make such uninformed comments would be to 1. search the scientific literature about the salinity tolerance of thiarid snails 2. do some experiments yourself. Now go back to your thread there and see for yourself if she even made a *single* post congratulating you or admitting she was wrong after you successfully acclimated the MTS to full saltwater using my method AND they started breeding like I said they would. She never made such a post. Besides running this forum here I am also quite adept at human psychology so I notice such patterns as they will undoubtedly repeat themselves in the future...as they have in her "Nerite Success" thread without followup. Many people just don't like to be proven wrong or admit failures/mistakes (especially if they have a "reputation" to hold up and "followers" looking up to them). It's a real psychological issue and probably the No. 1 reason why such people will never really get the whole picture. To learn and advance you NEED to make mistakes (after you have done all the research and preparation of course), ADMIT them, LEARN from them and move on. It's really the only way.

I'm not here to bash anyone. I'm just saying that just relying on someone's "reputation" is just not enough when it comes to hard proof. The proof just needs to be there. Nobody in science accepts someone's reputation, over hard proof either. So, unless I see a setup that actually makes sense from a common sense and scientific point of view AND I see pictures of baby nerites from veliger state through young adults (as I show on my Halocaridina rubra page for example) then I (and most others with common sense and scientific background/thinking) will say/assume that nobody has bred them yet.

The bottom line is that the most challenging issue in keeping any larvae alive is the diet in combination with keeping the water clean despite the copious feedings. If those problems have not been solved, then you can forget about putting a goby and macroalgae in a tiny tank and hoping that little snails will magically appear after having survived the lack of food and the appetite of the goby.

[Mustafa]

Have you or any other member collected them from the wild? I would like to do this one day.

I have collected virgin nerites from the wild in Jamaica. They were collected in freshwater and I kept them in freshwater. When I told people (some of them "snail experts" who obviously had never done any real collecting themselves and also had not consulted any scientific literature) that I caught them in freshwater and was keeping them in freshwater and that these are euryhaline animals (=animals that can live in a wide variety of salinties from freshwater to fully marine and even beyond somtimes), they thought I was "torturing" them and that they would die. A few years later they are still alive and happy. Before I let this information "leak" out into the Aquarium hobby, everyone thought these snails were marine snails for one reason or another. These are the same people that ignorantly went around and "warned" people that were bidding on my snails on aquabid (had to sell some to make space...I had a ton) that I was trying to screw them by selling marine snails to them. Did any of them come back and apologize and admit their mistakes now that it has become "common knowledge" that virgin nerites can be kept in freshwater? Of course not... There is absolutely no excuse for ignorance if all the information is out there. If you don't know and don't want to do the research, don't say anything. If you do say something, make sure to do the research. If you make a mistake, admit it, learn from it and move on. We all make mistakes after all and nobody is perfect.

Sorry to rant here...but people like that are the reason why so many branches of the aquarium hobby are still full of fairy tales and ignorant practices. It's very frustrating and disturbing. It shouldn't be like that.

[Neonshrimp]

If you don't know and don't want to do the research, don't say anything. If you do say anything, make sure to do the research. If you make a mistake, admit it, learn from it and move on. We all make mistakes after all and nobody is perfect.

Good words to follow but we all need some reminding now and then, myself included

Again, I just want to say these are great snails and those of you who get a chance to keep them should

[badflash]

Someone will likely figure it out, even if the woman in question here didn't. The snails sure as heck know how to do it in the wild. Once someone does figure it out, eveyone will be doing it.

Mustafa, I appreciate your insight as always.

[eraserbones]

I'll tell you that I have done this experiment a few years ago and also thought that I had "baby nerites" after seeing veligers all over the place.

Ah! That's more than I've seen. Mustafa, can you tell me what to look for? Are the veligers big enough to see with the naked eye?

[Mustafa]

Depends on whose naked eye is watching. You need really good eyesight to see the veligers. They are much, much smaller any any shrimp larvae...maybe comparable to newly hatched brine shrimp, maybe even somewhat smaller. They also "jump" around in a similar fashion as far as I can remember. It would help to have some kind of magnifying device to see them clearly, though.

You will notice if you have veligers (given good eyesight and no predators in the tank) because your whole tank will be filled with tiny dots that move.

I've seen veligers only in saltwater, never in freshwater. I don't know (yet) if this is always the case, but that has been my experience.

[eraserbones]

I just turned the agitator off and looked for dots. There's the normal swirl of dust (which is the Tetraselmis, visible as individual specs at ~10 mics) but nothing noticeably bigger than the algae except a bit of non-motile debris.

However, with my face up close, it looks to me like not all of the egg capsules are just rotting. Several have a visibly popped open lid which is still hanging to the side -- they definitely look 'hatched'.

So, that has be thinking that I may have hatching eggs, but definitely no surviving veligers.

Mustafa, can you tell me more about the conditions that you were maintaining when you saw little ones? I'm using more-or-less full-strength seawater (although all I have is a hydrometer so I can't guarantee precision there.) The water is at about 80 degrees F, and there's a small amount of fertilizer added to feed the algae. I've raised Yamato larvae in this same tank (and the adult nerites are happy), so I have no reason to think that there's anything generally toxic to invertebrates in there.

[Mustafa]

My water was close to full strength seawater. The salinity ranged from 26 to about 30 ppt depending on evaporation. I had two medium large pieces of live rock and in the tank. Macroalgae was growing on the live rock and I had no substrate. I did not use any fertilizer and would not recommend using fertilizer. It should be a lot easier to raise tetraselmis in a separate container and feed from that container once you see veligers. The veligers might just be too sensitive to the fertilizer. But of course there might be other things that need fixing that I am not aware of.

My veligers probably died due to lack of food as I was not feeding them any phytoplankton. I was hoping that some phytoplankton might develop by itself as the 10 gallon I was using was on the windowsill in full sunlight. Didn't happen. Next time I try this I will feed live phytoplankton (the smallest variety possible) from a culture.

[eraserbones]

A close look this morning turned up some wiggly white dots. Under a microscope (at ~100x) they look like this:

[ToddnBecka]

Interesting pics, but are they nerite larvae? Any estimate of how long it takes veligers to become actual snails?

[eraserbones]

There's nothing in the tank but Nerites at the moment. I'm pretty sure that this is a veliger, based on comparisons with these:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q ... ages&gbv=2

Also, here's a film of the little dude swimming:

http://www.flisrand.com/misc_images/veliger.mov

Towards the end of that clip it turns so that you can get a 360 view -- looks like a little snail with fuzzy wings.

I have no idea how long it takes until maturity, or if the larvae in my tank are even growing... they might require tidal queues, lunar cycles, rocks of the right color, etc. in order to settle. At least now I know that I've made it past the hatching step.

[badflash]

Good luck! I hope something comes of this.