Snails in poo

[paulthegreat]

I had a bit of a surprise yesterday when I saw pest snails in the poo of one of my orange female swords. I could not tell if the were just empty shells or not since the poo dropped in the plants just about a minute after I noticed them. Can it be that my Swords are eating pest snails but not digesting the shells? A very disturbing possibility also comes to mind! Can these pest mini-ramshorn snails be using my girls belly as a nursery and if so what am I supposed to do to put an end to this? Talk about internal parasites!!!

 

[Annastasia]

You are sure they were snail shells? It's not possible they were anything else?

The first thing that comes to mind, is do you feed any Live/Frozen/Freeze-dried food? As sometimes eggs can come in there, and they could be hatching inside her. Or there could be tiny dead snails in there.

The next thing that comes to mind is internal parasites. I believe there is at least one internal parasite that needs snails for it's life cycle. I think it's Schistosoma mansoni, but I could be wrong. Well, at least it's that way in horses, not sure if fish get that kind of parasite.

 

[paulthegreat]

There were definatly 3 mini-ramshorn snails(or at least the shells) in the poo. They may have been eaten and the Swordie just could not disolve the shell since I know they will gobble up the little pests when I crush them. She may have gotten a taste for them and when I skip a days feeding got hungry enough to give them a try. They were not full sized and I have seen much smaller snails in the gravel and filter