Snails and disaster
There were a couple of baby snails in the plant I brought home; two pond snails and what looks like a Malaysian trumpet snail. They were still pretty small when I first found them weeks after I had bought the plant, but they didn’t stay that way. And they started to make babies.
Well pretty soon the orange gunk that has been plaguing my tank was gone. I was marveling at how fast the snails were growing, and before I knew it there were a few baby snails. And then there were a few more. And then they were everywhere! They looked like tiny mobile bits of gravel, and my tank was really, really clean. The thing was that the old leaves on my Aponotagon bulbs, which were all about ready to go dormant, were dissapearing. The snails were eating them! My tank went from lush if grungy to clean but barren…
In the meantime, maybe out of depression from my plants being eating by the snail infestation, I began to ignore the tank. Water changes became less frequent, and subsequently feedings were less frequent for fearing too much waste. I neglected the Wonderland!
First, the danios’ tails started to fray, like they did around the time my youngest son was born six months ago and I didn’t change the water until he was 2 months old. Then, one of my two remaining neons got thinner and thinner until one morning I found him sucked up against the filter intake. Finally, I saw that my female guppy was starting to get thin, too. I did a water change and cleaned the tank good. Thinking she had lost her reason for being in that she hadn’t been pregnant in a while and there was no male to chase her around, I bought a male guppy at Walmart that matched her coloration perfectly, but when I got him home and prepared to do another water change I found her just laying on the bottom of the tank. She was still alive, but very lethargic. I gave her a salt bath and seperated her from the rest, but by morning she was dead. I am very bummed because she had good coloring for a female and they would have made a good pair.
Rest in peace little guppy.
On the upside, most everyone else seems to be thriving. I removed some of the snails, the crypt is looking very good with just a few bites missing here and there even if the Apos are pretty much gone. Ya win some, ya lose some. In the meantime I have to be better about water changes!
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