If you’re thinking of feeding your Mystery snails some special food, they would especially love blanched vegetables. The biofilm that forms inside your tank is also considered a source of sustenance for snails, including Mystery snails. Aside from actual algae inside your tank, they also enjoy algae wafers and algae tablets. Instead, mystery snails tend to eat mostly green food, as well as leftover fish food like pellets or flakes. Pretty much no common aquarium snail does this, so if you’re looking for a tankmate who can eat all waste including its own, you’re looking at the wrong snail. Although there are a few snail species that do eat other creatures’ poop, they typically don’t eat their own. Mystery snails do not eat their own poop. This means that you won’t experience a sudden explosion in mystery snails - or mystery snail poop, for that matter. Luckily, if you only have one in your tank, it can’t reproduce.
Their bioload tends to be rather big as well, which is why they’re not really recommended in smaller tanks. And since they’re constantly eating, that means they’re also constantly pooping. Of course, the more they eat, the more they’ll poop. This means that they can eat a lot of algae, which translates to more poop. They’re some of, if not the, biggest snails in any freshwater tank. Mystery snails can produce a lot of waste. What's Fire This Week is your weekly look at what everyone's talking about.Source: Reddit Do mystery snails produce a lot of waste? But also, how likely are you to puke right now? While they have no eyestalks, this leaves a place for the parasite to essentially ooze out and then dry in the hot, hot sun. Meanwhile, the eyestalks regenerate - so, the snail rarely dies even though this seems fairly violent. Here’s a general review of how this cycle works:Ī worm is formed in the belly of birds and it is spread when a bird poops.Īfter the parasite is eaten, it takes over major organs of the snail, and then lays its eggs, which will grow into larvae that take over its eyestalks (the overwhelming number of larvae moving around creates that dayglo disco effect you can see in the GIFs above and below).Ī bird bites off the eyestalks and eventually disperses more poop that contains the larvae, which can be eaten by snails again, continuing this truly bizarre - and frankly, cool and disgusting - circle of life. This is important because snails prefer going out at nighttime and this level of mind control allows the parasite to send snails out into daylight so the parasite can be eaten by birds.
SNAIL POOP FULL
That’s why it mimics a caterpillar - which could be breakfast, lunch and dinner for birds.īut in order to do that, the larvae need to plant their roots pretty deep so they can take full control over a snail’s body, including its brain. Why? In science, they call it “aggressive mimicry,” which very simply means pretending to be something else.īut to what end? The intended outcome of this is for the parasite to lure something to eat it.
Twitter)īasically, when this worm takes over, its larvae (baby worms) go into a snail’s eyestalks (the little knobby bits on its head) and move around a lot to look like a caterpillar. How a zombie snail is formed is truly fascinating.Ī parasitic worm called Leucochloridium needs a host - a host is a body a parasite can live in and take control of.įor this worm, that body belongs to a snail.Ī zombie snail is getting taken over by a parasite. This one isn’t digging its way out of a grave and walking the streets in search of human brains. A zombie is loose! And people on Twitter are really excited - and grossed out - by it!Įxcept it’s not the kind of zombie you’re used to.
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