# Weird little things crawling around in my aquarium?



## Bman422 (Nov 10, 2010)

Hey so a few days ago I decided to do the usual aquarium check, not expecting anything weird since all my water parameters are alright to the best of my knowledge, etc. When I looked at the walls of my aquarium, I noticed these little...things....or spots, I don't even know, just sitting there. At first I thought, ok, I have some green spot algae, maybe this is some sort of...brownish white equivalent or something. So I let it go thinking I'll do some research about it and figure out how to treat it. Later in the day I checked again and literally every single spot was gone. So I figured, hey, my otos are doing an amazing job keeping my tank clean! And that was that.

Today, I turned the light on and I saw the same exact spots all over the walls again. I decided to look a bit closer and I saw that all of them have roughly the same shape and size, and they all have what appear to be two antennae sticking out. I checked to see if they're mobile by using something as a reference, and, even though they're slow, they are moving around. 

What else is weird is that the second I turn on the lights, it seems like they all try to run and hide so that now, 20 minutes after the lights came on, my tank looks relatively sparkling clean. 

My tank currently has 2 guppies, 1 red dwarf gourami, 2 otos, and 4 mystery(apple? unsure) snails. I'm pretty sure I've seen my snails mating before, but I never saw them laying any eggs, and I doubt they would because I keep my water level pretty high and I read somewhere that they lay them above the water.

In any case, has anyone seen these things before? I'm attaching a slightly out of focus picture which took me more than 10 tries to get because they're so small. You can see the antennae on the one in the center pointing toward the bottom left corner of the picture. 

For the record, my parameters are 0 for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates.


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## Cassandra90 (Aug 16, 2010)

They look like baby snails. Do you have any live plants or other snails? If so they mostly came off live plants.


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## eileen (Feb 24, 2009)

I have those also. They are freshwater Limpets. Do a google on them. Their is not much information on them. They stick to the glass or tank like glue. The only way I get the numbers down is by putting my finger on them and slide them up the glass and remove. They also seem to be on the bottom on the gravel. They are harmless like a snail but they can get out of hand and multiply. I got them from plants I got at a auction. I do not like snail killers as I have assassin snails but they do not eat these and I have dwarf shrimps snail killers will also kill these. They eat algae. You can google Freshwater Limpet Pictures and a picture of one like you posted will pop up. I can't stand then as they look like lttle white spots on my tanks that have them.

When getting new plants this recipe I use to kill any snails that may hitchhike on the plants
1 gal. water to 2 TBS. of Alum soak for 2-3 days then rinse well before planting in tank. Alum is found in the spice section at the grocery stores.


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## Lupin (Aug 2, 2006)

I always thought limpets are cute. Then again, I am a snail freak.:roll:


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## eileen (Feb 24, 2009)

They are cute but not in the numbers that I see in my tanks. I have a magnifying glass that I bought at Staples and you can see them really eating the algae from the glass. I may always have them in my tanks that have them but I like to pick out the ones I see to keep the numbers down.

I like snails also. I have 1 Ivory Mystery snail, 7+ Assassin snails,2 Horned Netrite snails kept in different tanks. The Assassins are by their selfs to avoid eating my others I have. I hate pond snails, ramshorn snails,MTS snails as these breed like crazy. The others I have are slow breeders and I can control the numbers better.


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## Blaxicanlatino (Jan 28, 2008)

i have these in my tanks too. I have many too! They appear to be harmless to my plants but i like the way they look. They dont look like typical snails. I made a thread similiar to this a efw months ago on the same things in my tank. some people posted links of profiles on these creatures.


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## dfbiggs (May 19, 2010)

Lupin said:


> I always thought limpets are cute. Then again, I am a snail freak.:roll:


I am a snail freak also and was looking at getting some of these. I just started a new 15g MTS, Pond & ramshorn tank.

@ Eileen..thanks for letting me know how they multiply. I can't take much more snail multiplication...I'm the type that buys another tank to accommodate because I won't kill them..lol..what a mess I am in.


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## CPFAN001 (Nov 23, 2010)

I have a 60 gallon community tank mostly tetras (5 varieties), a few dwarf gouramis, couple of cories, and a platy... (pardon spelling) - I brought home a live plant about 6 weeks ago and out of no where a snail appeared... 1 turned to 2, 2 turned to 3 and so on... thought it was going to get out of hand and now the numbers are very minimal...

Me thinks my fishies like escargot...


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