Snails in the pond name. Large pond snail - mollusks - nature and animals

Every beginner in the aquarium business after a while is faced with the fact that the water becomes cloudy and aquatic plants begin to grow uncontrollably. Cleaning an aquarium and putting it in order takes a considerable amount of time. But you can have assistants - one of them is a pond snail. She is a natural cleaner of walls and aquarium accessories. In addition, snails are no less interesting to watch than fish.

Appearance and structure of the pond snail

Lymnaeidae is the Latin name for the pond snail. They live in fresh stagnant water or in reservoirs with slow flow.

The common pond snail has a fine-spiral shell with 5-6 curls, usually twisted to the right. Species with left-handed shells are found only in New Zealand and the Sandwich Islands. The degree of its elongation depends on the current in a given body of water - the width can be 0.3-3.5 cm, the height is from 1 to 6 cm. There is a large hole in the shell on the front side.

The color of the pond snail depends on natural features habitats. Most often, sinks are in a brown palette. And the head and body are from yellowish-brown to bluish-black.

The body of a mollusk consists of three sections - head, trunk and legs. All these parts are tightly attached to the inner surface of the shell. The snail's head is large, there are flat triangular tentacles on the head, and there are eyes on the inner edges of them.

The mollusk breathes through an opening protected by a noticeably protruding blade.

Habitats

The water snail pond snail is found in Europe, Asia, North America And North Africa. In addition to fresh standing waters and slow-flowing reservoirs, they are found in slightly salty and salty waters, as well as in geysers. In Tibet they live at an altitude of 5.5 thousand meters and a depth of 250 meters.

Varieties of pond snail

The species differ in the shell color characteristic of each locality, the thickness of its walls, the shape of the rings and mouth, the color of the legs and body.

Common pond snail (or large pond snail) is the most common species in the family gastropods. The length of the shell, which has a conical shape, is 4.5-6 cm, its width is 2-3.5 cm. The spiral of the shell has 4-5 rings, which expand significantly with each revolution, ending with an impressive size hole. The color of the semi-translucent walls is brown. The body has a greenish-brown tint. This type Ubiquitously inhabits freshwater bodies of the countries of the Northern Hemisphere.

The small pond snail (also called the truncated pond snail) has an elongated, pointed shell with 6-7 whorls. The turns of the rings are twisted to the right. The walls of the shell are thin but strong, whitish-yellow, almost transparent. It is 1-1.2 cm long, 0.3-0.5 cm wide. The body color is white-gray, uniform, but dark spots are possible on the mantle. This species is widespread in the nature of Russia, inhabiting swampy reservoirs and ponds. Sometimes found at low water levels in drying up reservoirs.

In the auricular species, the opening of the shell resembles a human ear - hence the name of this species. The shell is from 2.5 to 3.5 cm in height, 2.5 cm in width. Its walls are thin, the color is gray-yellow. This mollusk has no more than 4 shell rings. The shell has an almost round appearance, since the last whorl is quite large in diameter compared to others. The body is yellowish-green and grayish-green with many specks. The mantle is gray or spotted. Found in bodies of water with different water compositions. Lives on rocks, sunken tree trunks, stems and leaves of aquatic plants.

Other known species pond snail:

frilled (cloaked);
oval (ovoid);
swampy

Habits in the wild and life expectancy

IN natural environment Pond snails feed mainly on plants. But sometimes they eat flies, fish eggs and other similar small aquatic life.

To breathe, they climb out from the water column to the very surface. A snail needs to rise at least 6-9 times a day. But for species that live at considerable depths, oxygen dissolved in water is sufficient. The mollusk takes water into the lung cavity, turns over in the water with its sole up and slightly pulls it into the shell.

In nature, a pond snail can rarely be found sitting motionless on some snag. The mollusk is almost constantly busy - scraping algae from stones and eating aquatic vegetation. pond snail is about 20 cm/min.

Despite the fact that pond snails spend most of their lives in the water column, they survive well in dry reservoirs and in water covered with a crust of ice. The mollusk simply seals the shell with a film, and when moisture appears or thaws, it comes to life.

On average, under conditions wildlife The lifespan of a pond snail is only about 9 months. But with proper maintenance, a pond snail in an aquarium can live up to 2 years.

Aquarium content

The pond snail is a voracious mollusk. Therefore, it is better not to place them in carefully grown luxurious home “herbal gardens” - you may lose all aquatic plants. Snails especially like soft plants with succulent stems and leaves. But the pond snail is unpretentious in its maintenance.

Basic conditions:

Water temperature in the aquarium should be maintained at 20-26°C. In more warm water the mollusk will begin to actively reproduce, which is undesirable in a small volume of water.
Water hardness – moderate, lighting – dim (optimally – low-power fluorescent lamp).
Aquarium volume Any will do, the main thing is to control the population, not allowing pond snails to multiply endlessly. If there are too many individuals, diseases may develop.
you need a rocky one - pebbles are best, but a coarse sandy bottom is also acceptable.
Clean the aquarium with pond snails as usual, replacing a third of the water every 7 days. Filter You will need a powerful one, the direction of the jet is preferably horizontal.

Before introducing new pond snails, they must be kept in quarantine for several days. It is recommended to buy shellfish from pet stores. Since in the markets, snails can be freshly caught in a pond, and infect the entire aquarium with infections.

Who can you put in the same aquarium with?

Feeding at home

Pond fish prefer plant foods. They do not require frequent additional feeding - algae, rotten parts of plants and fish waste are sufficient for nutrition. The mollusks, like a grater, scrape off all these remains from the walls and soil with long, powerful tongues. You can also give them:

fresh pumpkin,
apples,
zucchini,
white cabbage,
broccoli,
tomatoes,
carrot,
greens grown at the dacha (all cut into small pieces).

From time to time, pond snails need mineral feeding - calcium is needed for shells. It is found in chalk, egg shells, sepia - all this must be given in crushed form.

Breeding

Pond fish are hermaphrodites. They reproduce either singly or in flocks. Eggs are laid several times throughout the year. That is, during a lifetime they hatch offspring from about 500 clutches. Clutches of eggs are attached to plant leaves.

The clutch consists of small transparent eggs fastened together with mucus, forming an oval-shaped sac. If this is facilitated favorable conditions maintenance, one individual makes up to 25 clutches of 80 eggs within 4 months.

The incubation period is 14-20 days. Newly hatched babies already have thin shells.

Sexual maturity in pond snails occurs at approximately 7 months.

Diseases

These snails are resistant to disease, but they themselves are often carriers of infection (which is practically undetectable by eye). They themselves suffer from fungus - visually this manifests itself in the form white plaque on the sink. Therapy - regular baths with manganese and saline solutions, long-term quarantine.

How much does a pond snail cost?

To avoid infections, it is better to purchase pond snails from specialized pet stores, rather than from private owners, and not to catch them yourself in water bodies. The average cost of one adult is about 50 rubles.

Contact Hazard

A representative of the family of freshwater mollusks of the order Grey-eyed. It has an elongated, strongly pointed shell towards the apex, curled to the right, usually thin and translucent. The shell curls expand very quickly and the last one, the so-called belly, occupies the most significant part of the shell. Its color is pale yellowish.
The pond snail, like the reel, is one of the mollusks with pulmonary respiration and therefore from time to time floats to the surface to inhale atmospheric air. Its body is greenish-dark gray in color with yellow spots. The head is equipped with two triangular flat tentacles, at the base on the outer side of which there are eyes. The leg is shorter than the reel leg, but significantly wider. From the leg, the body inside the shell rises upward in a spiral and forms, closer to the opening of the shell, a kind of sac that contains a mass of vessels and serves as a respiratory organ. On its right side there is an opening for air intake, which is closed by tightly locking muscles. The hole and the entire respiratory organ are easily visible when the animal, crawling along the plant, turns and often almost completely crawls out of the shell. This often happens when the pond snail, like a reel, crawls with its foot along the surface of the water, which it does in order to breathe atmospheric air.
Under the head there is a mouth opening, consisting of an upper jaw and two lateral sickle-shaped ones. A long tongue is also placed here, which scoops up algae. This is especially clearly visible when a pond snail crawls along the glass of an aquarium.
Pond snails are bisexual animals, and therefore they can be found mating 6-10 pieces together. Pond snails lay their eggs on the lower surface of floating leaves, on glass in an aquarium, and on various objects. The caviar is not connected in a flat cake shape, but in a worm-shaped or oval shape, similar to an icicle. From May to August they lay up to 20 such icicles, and each icicle contains 20-100 eggs. The eggs are transparent. The development of the embryo proceeds quickly, and after just a few days the embryo, covered with ciliated hairs, begins to rotate rapidly.
The snails hatch from their eggs no earlier than twenty, and sometimes even forty days, which, in all likelihood, depends on both the water temperature and the intensity of the lighting.
A remarkable phenomenon is sometimes observed with the gelatinous mass of eggs of these snails. It is covered with some kind of mold - small cilia with a pin-shaped thickening at the end, apparently, lily of the valley. These creatures apparently contribute to the destruction of this mass.
The snail reaches large sizes, and therefore is not entirely convenient for an aquarium. This inconvenience is increased by the fact that it grows so quickly and short time reaches large sizes.
Along with its rapid growth, this snail is distinguished by its gluttony, which preys on aquarium plants, with particular preference for plants that are at the same time soft and juicy. When young, the pond snail is not dangerous, since it is small and its appetite is insignificant.
Pond fish are capable of eating the corpses of their own brothers.
Also belongs to the same genus of pond snails Limnea stagnalis (common pond snail), even larger than the above.

Many different snails live in ponds, rivers, and gardens, but the most common species is the pond snail. It lives in places where there is sufficient moisture, so it can be seen all over the world. This mollusk is quite often stocked in aquariums, as it copes remarkably well with plaque that forms on glass, stones or other objects, and it is also interesting to watch such a snail.

The pond fish does an excellent job of removing the deposits that form on the glass of the aquarium.

Description of the mollusk

Prudovik is freshwater snail, which has a well-developed spiral shell. The shell itself consists of five or six turns. On one side it has an mouth, and on the other there is a sharp peak. It reliably protects the soft body of the snail from various adverse effects and mechanical damage.

The pond fish breathes with the help of its lungs, and therefore it is forced to periodically rise to the surface of the water. At the very edge of the shell there is a special round hole that leads into the lung. And it is there that the blood is enriched with oxygen and carbon dioxide is released.

The pond snail's body consists of three main parts:
heads;
torso;
legs.

leg freshwater inhabitant occupies the ventral part of the body. It is muscular, and with its help the snail moves along the surface. Life cycle in mollusks it is quite short, since in winter they all die. Depending on the species, pond snails differ from each other in the color of their shell, body and legs, and they may also have different shape and shell thickness.
The most common types
Snails are unique animals that do not bring any harm to humans; on the contrary, they have many benefits, as they actively eat various weeds, clean the aquarium well of growth, and even have healing properties. In nature, there are many variants of the pond snail, each of which has its own characteristic features.
But the most common types are the following:

There are other types of these mollusks, but they are much less common. For example, there are pond snails that live at a depth of up to 250 m or at an altitude of 5 thousand meters.

Nutrition and reproduction
The large pond snail feeds mainly on plant foods. In nature, it eats various weeds, algae and even rotten plants. In an aquarium using long tongue it scrapes off the plaque that forms on the walls. This mollusk also eats any food that settles on the bottom.
As additional feeding, you can put small pieces into the aquarium. eggshells and chalk. From plant foods, snails can be given apples, cabbage, zucchini, pumpkin, carrots, and lettuce.

In nature, the pond snail eats various weeds, algae and even rotten plants.
Pond snails, like many other snails , are hermaphrodites, but their fertilization occurs in a cross way. They are also able to independently fertilize their own eggs. These moisture lovers put off the large number eggs, which are enclosed in a special transparent mucous clutch. Usually it has an elongated shape and is attached to various underwater objects, most often to vegetation. Sometimes one such clutch contains up to 300 eggs.
The eggs themselves are small and almost transparent. After about a month, small snails hatch from them, which external signs no different from adults. Pond fish reproduce quite actively, so if they are in an aquarium, you need to periodically remove excess eggs. In captivity, these mollusks can live up to two years, and during this period they lay eggs up to 500 times.
Difficulties in maintenance and illness
Pond fish are completely unpretentious animals, but the main difficulty in keeping them is that they can carry dangerous diseases, which at first glance are almost impossible to recognize. The most common disease in these mollusks is fungal infection. And if an infected individual is placed in community aquarium with fish and other inhabitants, it can quickly spread the infection.
To avoid such a situation, before placing the pond snail in a community aquarium, you need to keep it in quarantine for several days. During this period, you should put it daily for several minutes in a weak solution of potassium permanganate or table salt.
If the snail does not consume the required amount of minerals and trace elements, then the walls of her shell may begin to become damaged or become thinner. In this case, the pond snail should be fed with foods that contain a high calcium content. After some time, the shell will heal and be completely restored.

Pond snails (Lymnaea stagnalis) belong to the class Gastropods, the subclass of true snails and the order Pulmonata. Currently there are about 120 species. The pond snail and other species of this family are very variable: the configuration, size, thickness of the shell, and the color of the legs and body of these organisms vary. They live in fresh water rivers, lakes and ponds. Ponds are equipped with a solid shell with a sharp top, twisted in 4 - 5 turns, and a large mouth from which the head and leg protrude. The head is equipped with a mouth, two tentacles and two eyes. The pond snail's body is a large spiral sac covered with a mantle and shell, located above the leg. The pond snail has broken bilateral symmetry due to the turbo-spiral shape of the shell, which led to asymmetry of the organs located in the mantle cavity (one atrium, one kidney, half of the liver). On the ventral side of the pond snail there is a massive muscular leg with a wide sole, which serves for its movement.

Structure

In pond snails, like others pulmonary snails, lacking primary gills. They breathe when lung help, which is a specialized area of the mantle cavity, enriched a large number blood vessels. Pond snails periodically rise to the surface of the water surface to fill their lungs with atmospheric air through a round breathing hole located at the base of the shell, since they can stay under water for no more than an hour. In addition, pond snails are able to breathe over the entire surface of their body. In clean reservoirs, in water enriched with oxygen, mollusks can live at depth and not rise for a new portion of oxygen. They get oxygen from the water that fills the lung, which functions like a gill. Living in such conditions, mollusks are smaller than those living in shallow water. The heart is located next to the lung and consists of an atrium and a ventricle. In pond snails it is not closed circulatory system with colorless blood. One kidney serves as the excretory organ.

The nervous system is a peripharyngeal nerve ring formed by nerve ganglia, from which nerves extend to all organs. The tentacles are equipped with tactile receptors and chemical sense organs (taste and smell). There are also balance organs.

Digestive system The pond snail consists of the esophagus, pouch-shaped stomach, liver, intestines and ends in the anus. The oral cavity of the pond snail passes into a muscular pharynx, in which there is a grater tongue (radula), covered with rows of hard teeth. The radula pond snail scrapes off particles of plants and small animals and eats them.

Pond snails feed mainly on plant foods. Their diet includes both living plants and decomposed ones. In addition, they eat bacteria and animal food (flies caught in the water, fish eggs).

In this article we will look at who the pond snail is, what features it has, where it is found and much more about this wonderful mollusk. What types of pond snails exist and what they look like.

Any from pond snails, whether ordinary, small or large, is a snail that lives in ponds and gardens where there is enough moisture.

Large and small pond snail

The large pond snail belongs to the class of gastropods, which is the most numerous and diverse compared to other classes of gastropods. There are more than 90 thousand species of such mollusks in nature, and their habitat is not only ponds, but also the sea and land.

Great pond snail is about 5 cm long and many distinctive features from brothers.

Let's talk about the external structure of a large pond snail. It consists of three parts that are noticeable and clearly distinguishable from each other. The body outside the shell is covered with a mantle to protect the internal mucous membrane; the shell of the mollusk is twisted for convenience into a spiral of 5 turns. This structure of the shell provides reliable protection of the body from irritants and mechanical damage. . The sink contains lime for the basis of the structure of the spirals, and covers it on top organic matter horn-like type (this is found on the horns of cattle, etc.).

Due to the structure of the shell, it received an asymmetrical body to better fit into the “protection”; the shell is connected to the body by a muscle. The muscle allows the animal to be pulled inside the shell, and with the help of a pronounced leg, the mollusk can crawl back out.

In internal structure For pond snails of any type, everything is arranged simply. The main organs are:

digestive complex;
leg;
eyes;
excretory and respiratory system;
sole and mucus secretion glands.

The snail feeds on plant food in crushed form, then the food from the tongue (has a “grater”) passes into the pharynx, is processed by the secretion of splitting and is processed in the stomach and intestines.

The circulatory system is not closed, and the mollusks move due to their powerful legs, which glide over any surface thanks to the secretion secreted by the glands.

These animals are unique and there is no need to kill them. . They don't harm anyone, nor gardens, because they feed on plant foods that are easily processed (that is, weeds such as ephemerals (wheatgrass, woodlice). Snails also have healing properties, they are at proper nutrition and application, they secrete mucus, which nourishes human skin and produces regeneration of epithelial cells.

Small pond snail

Who are pond snails? in general, you know from the previous paragraphs, now we will talk about small things. There are several small pond snails in nature:

Small snails are found in all gardens, are small in size and beautiful appearance. Be kind to snails, they do no harm, more good.

Common pond snail

The common pond snail is found in middle lane– Russia, Europe. The pond snail is large in size, one shell is 7 cm, not including the body. The pond snail breathes with nothing more than miniature lungs, the circulatory system is not closed, and they feed on tough plant foods, detritus and midges. The external structure does not differ from a large pond snail, except that the body does not always correspond to the size of the shell, sometimes smaller than the shell. The color of the shell is pearlescent brown. Body color – brown, gray, white.

Snails can easily survive both in nature and in the artificially created environment of a terrarium or aquarium. The snail moves thanks to the secretion of mucus and the outer sole, which allows it to move quite quickly over various distances. Snail mucus is rarely used in cosmetology, but most often the mollusk is used for decoration.

Mollusks become attached to people - breeders, so if you fall in love with a snail, then do not give it to others, otherwise weak heart the animal will not survive.

Now let's take a look at the photo of the pond snail

Great pond snails