Well, I don't see how that would work if the golds are true albinos, because albinism is a genetic recessive, so alb- x alb- would never give you wild-type. Perhaps @John58Ford can enlighten us...
What did you do with your tank(s) today?
- Thread starter DMD123
- Start date
fishguy1978
Legendary Member
True. I know there’s a blue ish variety. Maybe the golds carry the allalel (sp?).
John58Ford
Well-Known Member
Ah, I think I might have a good guess. Keith uses my plants too, and although I have mostly golden mystery snails, white glitter foot type, I also keep 3 colors of ramshorn. I have a brown wild type, blue (looks white after they mature), and Leopard.
It's hard to tell a mystery from a ramshorn until they are bigger than a BB so maybe you got a few of my leopard or blue ramshorn with the last batch of plants?
If they are for sure mystery snails, they would be the first of my line to stray from true gold. The common morphs as far as I know them are:
Gold: yellow shell/light foot
Jade: yellow shell/dark foot
Ivory: white/light
Blue: white/dark
Brown:brown/light
Black: Brown/dark
Magenta: purple/light
Purple: purple/dark
My thought is that the dark and the light footed mystery snails are actually different enough genetically (not morphs but infact subspecies) that they don't share a line. I have seen other snail folks breed pure lines of either dark foot, or light foot, with various shell colors, but with no outliers on foot color. I have seen people who introduced mixed tanks and didn't really know who was doing what with who, or which snails bred before purchase that has a mix of foot colors in the tank but anyone's guess on the lineage of the clutch.
RE albinos, although I have seen snails and several commonly available fish marketed as "albino" I don't believe that to be a true gene marker in the case of the mystery snail, just a marketing distinction for one that is of the lighter color of two that are similar otherwise. Gold vs Jade isn't always used in a fish store that might have both available, and allot of shops still market them as golden inca snails regardless of color or line.
There are a few breeding projects (I don't participate) trying to dial in this exact thing, mscgp(mystery snail color genetics project) is the largest scale example I know of, then there are threads around the planted and international forums. But so far I haven't found anything super solid. If you get several off color mysteries, I would be interested to give them a tank and see if they are true morphs, but you would need to separate them very early as they do store genetic packets for release later in life.
Last edited:
How embarrassing: as a geneticist one needs to always be aware of the possibility of contaminants, and your explanation does make sense. I was thinking that because both kinds of snails appeared simultaneously, they must be related; but of course, that need no be the case. I saw these kinds of serendipitous coincidences many times during my scientific career.
There are still a couple of small remaining mysteries, however. First, the tank with the baby golds doesn't contain any plants that I got from you, and never has. That said, inadvertently moving snails from one tank to another happens all the time. More mystifying is the fact the the little blue snails don't look like ramshorns, and to tell the truth, they are subtly different from the golds as well. They look like this-
Is this what a baby ramshorn looks like?
There are still a couple of small remaining mysteries, however. First, the tank with the baby golds doesn't contain any plants that I got from you, and never has. That said, inadvertently moving snails from one tank to another happens all the time. More mystifying is the fact the the little blue snails don't look like ramshorns, and to tell the truth, they are subtly different from the golds as well. They look like this-
Is this what a baby ramshorn looks like?
Stopped at Aquarium Paradise today to pick up some frozen foods. Noticed a lot of big Oscars, at least 6 of them! They all looked good with no HITH and seemed very healthy but odd to see so many. This used to be more common in the past but hadn’t seen that in a while.
@lloyd378, did you bring your Oscars in? lol
@lloyd378, did you bring your Oscars in? lol
John58Ford
Well-Known Member
Nope, this is what a baby tadpole snail looks like though. If I'm not mistaking, that cute little snail is wound left hand spiral, mystery snails are right handed. A ramshorn is wound nearly symmetrical.
I have had in the past a population of leopard patterned tadpoles, they are somewhat like a common pond snail but extremely miniaturized, and left handed. Pond snails are right handed and more pointy, also grow to be near 1" commonly. The tadpole is a subspecies of bladder snail, rarely gets over 1/4" and is one of my favorite helpers in ornate planted nano tanks. It cleans corners better than any other critter I've tried.
Issue with the tadpole is even a smaller tetra species like the silvertip or rummynose is more than large enough to pretty much eat the population into nothing. The shells are quite thin so they are not easy to move either. There's a skin chance you could've gotten an egg sac of those from me, but my population has been near 0 in almost all my tanks the last year and a half or so. I'm actually trying to build a colony of them in a cylinder tank currently.
Post thought: I have no idea why it appears to be such a pretty color though. My tadpole snail population would have been best described as light gold shells with black streaked leopard spots, light footed.
Last edited:
So the mystery continues. All of these little ones in my tank are the same pretty blue-grey color. I'll keep an eye on them and keep you posted. Here's another pic showing that the two populations are quite different. The goldies are growing rapidly-
Noticed one of my swordtails turned out to be a male when I thought it was female. Not a sex switch but very young fish maturing and turning out to be male. Hopefully 2 males to 2 females is an okay ratio. Actually surprised how bold and aggressive these fish can be. They seem to have zero fear of the gourami that is huge in comparison and kind of butt heads with the apisto. Fearless fish!
fishguy1978
Legendary Member
I have had the same experience with mine. The males are super aggressive towards each other with the dominant male harassing sub males to death. I’ve pulled juveniles thinking they were female but they were immature males.
No, I brought in a couple a few months back at the 6” mark and they sold them in a week.
Those massive ones came from a local military guy moving away and dropping them off.
I asked about them when I was there ( why there were so many). I do think it would be a fun tank to have all of them together in like a 10’ long tank. It would be 5-6 big wet pets always begging for food!
Thinking I might have a pairing up of two sajica starting to breed. Female is in a pleco tube, male pushing away all the others. Funny it's not the largest one that I believe to be male but one of the smaller ones that has decided to breed. Will see if I get a batch out of them. They are related to convicts so the bunnies of the fish keeping world... lol
Cleaned an Aquaclear 110 this evening. Spring is here and the tanks are getting green so removing any excess things that feed that algae. The 90 gallon tanks get a lot of natural light too so they can be a challenge keeping as crystal clear as I like.
Last edited:
Came home to a normal tank, the 300 was normal and calm and I fed the fish like usual. Came back about two hours later and notice a big bala swimming weird, the kind of weird that is the death rolls kind of weird. No idea what happened, maybe a head injury from running into glass? Anyway I scooped the big guy out and euthanized with clove oil…
In not sure if this one was the largest one or second to largest one. Will miss having it in the tank.
Angle makes it hard to tell that tape is exactly at the nose. So 14” bala lost today. Had it since June 2019, got it from Aquarium Paradise and it was already pretty big when I had got it then.
In not sure if this one was the largest one or second to largest one. Will miss having it in the tank.
Angle makes it hard to tell that tape is exactly at the nose. So 14” bala lost today. Had it since June 2019, got it from Aquarium Paradise and it was already pretty big when I had got it then.
Last edited:
Noticed the Sajica are not having a successful breeding process. Thinking the pleco cave is a bit awkward for them. Im going to pick up a couple small clay pots to try. I have a few 6” ones but I think they are way too big. Probably 4” pots would be perfect.
Stopped at Lowes on the way to work and picked up two of the 4" clay pots. Hopefully this will help with a successful pairing and breeding. Interesting that the same female has been ready to breed twice now and it was the second time that one of the smaller males was her mate. Ive noticed the largest sajica, which Im sure is male, has been paying attention to the female a bit more lately. This is the one I would like to be the father of a spawn for sure, he has a big burley build and has that mini-midas look about him already.
So I added the clay pots and they look huge for these liitle fish, thinking I should have got 3” pots, lol. So kind of dumb question since Ive never done this before. Do I just place these pots on the surface of the substrate on their sides or should they be partially buried?
fishguy1978
Legendary Member
Yes,
Most cichlids will want to deposit their eggs on the sides of the pots, in which case it doesn't matter whether you partially bury the pot or not.
