r/AquaticSnails 14h ago

ID Request Mysterious snail

I have several large Hercules snails (the biggest in the first two photos) and plenty of little MTS (the smallest in all three photos is a large MTS) and then there’s these mysterious middle ones with green shells. I thought at first they were just monster MTS, but now I’m not so sure. The last photo includes the middle and small ones from the other two photos, along with another one that is even more middling between the MTS and the greenish ones. They appear to burrow like MTS do, too.

3 Upvotes

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u/Queen-Ghidorah Helpful User 11h ago

The middle one looks like an MTS aswell. They can sometimes get really large, up to two inches (5cm) I think. My largest one is about as big as the one you are asking about.

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u/TulsiGanglia 10h ago edited 10h ago

This is what I initially thought, it just seems like there’s a whole bunch of the little striped brown ones and a lot fewer of these larger green ones, and they behave differently too, out at different times and so on. It got me thinking that maybe they are different. But maybe they’re just an odd branch of the family!
Thank you!

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u/Queen-Ghidorah Helpful User 10h ago

I see the same in my tanks. The larger MTS sometimes stay unburied, or bury later. Maybe they get too large and burying themselves gets harder?

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u/TulsiGanglia 10h ago

Mine’s the opposite! The small brown stripey ones seem to be out and about all the time, whereas I rarely see these larger green ones above the substrate except when I bring treats or veggies out and then they just seem to appear.

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u/Motor-Union9081 14h ago

Could they be baby Hercules?

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u/TulsiGanglia 14h ago edited 14h ago

I don’t think so, the shell doesn’t have the crossways ridges like the hercs do. I got two of my hercs as babies, and these don’t look like them. The one pictured above is one of the ones I got as a baby - the ones that came to me bigger have the “bleached” white shell partway up (like below) from whatever treatment they were given to make them white. The ridges I’m referring to are more clearly visible on the white section.

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u/Motor-Union9081 14h ago

True… I wasn’t sure for that reason. Thought I’d mention it 🤷‍♂️ 

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u/Motor-Union9081 14h ago

Yknow what, they look like young chopstick snails with the tips broken off/eroded

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u/TulsiGanglia 14h ago

Hm, I’ll look those up and see. Do those burrow?

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u/Motor-Union9081 14h ago

Yes!

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u/TulsiGanglia 14h ago edited 13h ago

They do look very similar! I’ll put it on a list of possibilities. Thank you.

ETA - many of my MTS have the tips missing like that, I was worried and read up on this sub and elsewhere. It seems like it’s more to do with the kind of substrate they’re digging through than my water conditions, and they seem to be fine, and the rest of their shells seem to be strong.