Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

brown footed....Thats what I meant by brown flesh..... They have brown flesh and brown shells... The population that founded them was red footed and red shelled....

Brown is dominant. If you let the brown ones stay they all end up brown with a red just now & then. To re-establish reds you need to pull out baby reds while they are virgin and put them in another tank.

My "red" ramshorns have somewhat translucent tan colored shells. Their bodies are peachy-pink.

Are these considered "red"? They could certainly be more red. . . .

Hi Yucca,

Some of mine are the same color you described and others are much more red. The difference is the water conditions in my case. The snails in my softer water are lighter colored and sometimes have a golden tint to their shells. The ones in harder water have darker shells.

Anything from pink to orange is considered red. Like neon said, the thinner the shell, the better they look.

Regarding the second to last post located on the first page of this thread.

Did the majority of people following this thread miss reading it when this thread transferred over to become two pages? (Like since it was a post late in the first page when the thread turned into two pages maybe people just clicked page two thinking they had not missed anything)

I ask because it was a relatively long post and the later responses in this thread have not addressed the things brought up in that post.


I made a lot of assumptions, made a lot of pseudo conclusions, and stated a lot of distantly remembered genetics information. I really wanted to hear several things in responses to that particular post that I have yet to hear even hinted about in the posts following it..

[Please do not attempt to answer these questions directly because I’m interested in the answers as they relate to that second-to-last-post on page 1 of this thread]

1) Are we sure of the mode of inheritance for color/pigment in Ramshorns Snails (“Feet” or the “flesh” being anything from Brown/Black/Red/Pink/Blue/White/etc…Sometimes this “feet” or “flesh” trait is coupled with a different pigment shell, Brown/Black/Red/Pink/Blue/White/etc) ?

2)Do we know that these colors in Ramshorns snails follow one single mode of inheritance, like do different colors adhere to different inheritance rules?

3) How plausible are my scenarios that I generated to explain what I observed?

4) Did I, or to what extent, did I screw up the principles of inheritance?

5) Did my observations appear flawed? Like did I misinterpret certain basic data that caused a distortion in what I observed?

I have tried searching for information on Ramshorns Snails Genetics but it seems difficult to find information that could be considered credible. I mostly find forum posts stating that a given color follows simple inheritance, but I cannot seem to find out where they found out this information.

The snails shells are white. The foot is responsible for the color in rams.
I have browns, reds and blues. When dead they are all white.

The color in the foot may have multiple genes. There is not much info in that area. Pure reds breed true as do browns and blues. They all will interbred and you can get pinks, purples, and browns once again.

Once my tank clears up a little I'll post some pics of my blues. They are the newest ram color.

If you want the best color, keep them in soft water as that give the most translucent shell.

badflash wrote:The red were oriiginally bred from the brown. I have a tank of pure reds and every now and then a brown will show up, so I don't think this is new. I also get red feet with dark shells now and then.

That portion of the post I must have misinterpreted from the bold part of your statement.....

No, all it means is some of mine are not pure. I have another tank I pulled a couple of reds out of and they are all reds from them. I got some browns as pest snails with an order of crays and it contaminated a tank. My turtle is very happy about that...

Terran:

I think many of your questions are answered here:
http://www.applesnail.net/content/genet ... _genes.htm

It's a well-researched site, and while the focus is Apple Snails, I wouldn't be surprised if the information applied to ramshorns as well.

I started my snail population with 3 red ramshorns I got from a friend. I must have been lucky, because 3 years and hundreds of descendants later, I only ever got a single non-red snail. It was an interesting color and shell pattern, see pictures. Sort of grey-purple flesh and mottled shell. It never occured again, unfortunately.



Compared to a "regular" red ramshorn.



It was getting boring, so I just added some brown ones to the mix. Looking forward to some interesting variations!