# Hitchhikers to my tank .. what are they?



## [email protected] (Feb 4, 2020)

Hi there .. excited to have my first tank ..well it's my daughter's but it has turned into a family affair. We bought some plants when we bought a betta male and a black nerite snail and it seems like we got some stragglers from the plants or something.

Can anyone help identify these and if they are okay to keep in the tank?

[email protected]


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## infolific (Apr 10, 2016)

It looks like you've got a "pest" snail and gammarus (aka scuds).

The pest snails don't do harm, but some people find them unsightly. 

The scuds are beneficial in my opinion. Many fish will eat them.


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## [email protected] (Feb 4, 2020)

thanks for the feedback .. i will take a look


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## [email protected] (Feb 4, 2020)

do you know what kind of pest snail it is?


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## alphaparrot (Nov 28, 2017)

It's hard to tell from the angle in the photo, but from what I can tell, it has a left-handed (clockwise) whorl, and a goldish-speckled shell, right? I'm guessing Physella acuta (acute bladder snail). I like them; I think they're pretty, they don't really eat plants as they far prefer algae, biofilm, leftover fish food, and any dead animal matter (if a fish dies it'll be gone in a day or two), and they both move quite rapidly and can "swim" in the same way a hot air balloon can fly. The thing to be aware of is that if there's abundant food, they *will* reproduce quickly, and are capable of asexual reproduction if there are no potential mates. My planted 10g shrimp tank at one point had probably in the vicinity of 200+ snails, and then as the shrimp population grew, the population has dwindled to now 10-30. They don't get much larger than a centimeter across at the absolute largest.

If you find a somewhat larger, brownish snail with a right-handed (counter-clockwise) whorl, and flat triangular Yoda-like antennae, that's probably Lymnaea stagnalis, the greater pond snail. They *do* eat plants from time to time, and can in certain cases reach up to 2-3 inches across by the end of their lifetime.


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## [email protected] (Feb 4, 2020)

Seems they are gone now. I think my betta must have eaten them


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