Apr 7
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Shrimp and Snail Bonanza
I got some more plants for The Pitt tank and snail tanks.
Snail babies. Snabies.
it's an exciting day! the first batch of eggs hatched, and this poor snail has been egged :(
North Carolina wildlife officials on Thursday released 2,000 endangered snails back into the wild.
Y'all know I'm a sucker for endangered species reintroduction stories, right? Especially when it's not a charismatic megafauna being highlighted. So of course I was excited when this headline crossed my dash.
The magnificent ramshorn (what a great name!), also known as Planorbella magnifica, is a tiny snail endemic to ponds and other quiet waterways in North Carolina's lower Cape Fear River basin. In fact, they were only known from four sites in the region. Due to plummeting numbers in its limited habitat, some of the last of these snails were removed from the wild to create an intensive captive breeding program. (It really doesn't take much to keep a snail happy in captivity once you figure out what conditions it needs.) The last wild individual was observed twenty years ago, and it is considered to be extinct in the wild.
That is, until now. Two thousand of these little reddish snails were released into a safe pond in Brunswick County. Researchers are using this as a way to observe how well these captive-bred snails adapt to their historic habitat, including successful reproduction. If all goes well, we can hope to see more reintroductions of these native mollusks back into their original range.
We nature nerds are biased, because we think everything in nature is awesome (yes, I'm even an apologist for mosquitoes!) So of course we get excited when a bunch of rare little snails get a second chance, because we understand how crucial each species is to its ecosystem. It can be tougher sometimes to sell the importance of this to the general public, who may question why it would be such a big deal for one snail species to go extinct. That's why I think it's so important for us to keep sharing our knowledge and--perhaps even more importantly--our enthusiasm for all these amazing beings. Keep being cheerleaders for critters like these snails, and your enthusiasm may end up being contagious!
Anyway here's a blue ramshorn snail
The duckweed merry-go-round is popular in my tank.
[video id: An aquarium with several snails hanging upside down from little green duckweed plants on the surface, riding the plants as the filter current current sends them in loops and circles around the water surface.]