What you are calling the bottom of the snail is actually the top, in technical terms called the apex. The basal portion is where the aperture is located, and from which part of the soft body comes out for the snail to crawl. So what you are experiencing is erosion and breakage of the apex.
I thinks these worms are eating my snails, can you please confirm?
- Thread starter professorjimjam
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Thank you for teaching me these. I was always thinking that is the bottom, becuase usually when the snails climbed in the glass, the apex was down, so they are going backward
also on the other hand these snails reproduce faster than before. so the babies of the snail all over the tank, but too bad they get breakage in the apex.
I made a large water change to make the water parameters like the tap water. Now, when the water possibility fixed, will the apex erosion of these snails be repaired by themselves, or the whole population of these snails are gone?
You mentioned introducing the worms a few months ago, implying that you were seeing a change in your MTS population health after the introduction of the worms. I agree that water chemistry, mainly pH and mineral content, are the most likely cause of snail shell problems, but I wonder if the the worms are competing with the MTS for food in the substrate. Could a reduction in nutrition have taken the snails from being able to maintain shell integrity to now losing ground?
I think that if a lack of food were a problem, it would manifest itself as a reduction in the population of one or both species. Breeding would be suppressed or halted altogether, older individuals would perhaps die at a faster rate without being replaced. The OP indicates that the snails are actually reproducing faster than they did before; that's not what happens when food is scarce.
If that worm is, as I believe, a Tubifex, then the fact that it is part of a reproducing colony points directly at poor conditions in the tank, specifically in the substrate. Overfeeding...resulting in too much organic material in the substrate...seems more likely than a lack of it.
I'm more or less neutral about MTS, don't have any now but for many years they were a fixture in just about all my tanks and they didn't bother me. I'd see lots of older, larger individuals with shells showing damage to the point, which of course is the oldest part of the shell. Didn't worry about it at all.
If I saw Tubifex living and reproducing in a tank, I'd react the same way as I would to finding live worms in one of my dog's turds, i.e. I'd take immediate and perhaps drastic steps to eliminate them. In the case of the tank, that would involve a thinning/removal of the substrate, combined with thorough stirring and vacuuming of what remained. I'd also re-think my feeding strategy for the tank.