A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Physella Acuta
These very tiny snails are common intruders to aquarium owners. They are a dark brown color. Tadpole snails are able to reproduce very quickly, and while eating some algae, they also suck up lots of oxygen if in large quantities.
Freshwater ponds; Aquariums.
If you want to get rid them, let some lettuce or a carrot float in your tank and pull it out when some of the snails have latched on.
Spotted on Dec 30, 2014
Submitted on Dec 31, 2014
2 Comments
And they are also very useful as alarm system. When too many tadpoles get to breath at the surface, it means the water has a problem, nitrites, pollution, or lack of air, as it's not a normal behavior for them to go to the surface all at the same time.
Fake, as they breath at the surface, and with their tiny bodies, hard to imagine how they could «suck a lot of oxygen», they are really beneficial in every tank I added them, they are great janitors, removing all the dead stuff they can find, animals, like vegetals. I recommend monitoring their reproduction, as they tend to be invasive, but they're only invasive in the tank where a lot of crap things are ready to eat. They auto regulate their population, and reproduce less when the tank is very clean. Snails that are air breather cannot deprevate the tank from oxygene, they don't take it from water.