Small Ramshorn Snail Eggs Pictures

I have mini ramshorn snails in half of my tanks. This is not because I like them or I wanted them, they are just evasion. They came from nowhere and nearly impossible to get rid of.

Yesterday I was going to clean my IWAGUMI shrimp cube tank sides and notices several snail eggs clutches. These clutches are very small, they are around 1mm in size. It’s impossible to see what is inside with a bare eye. So, I spend some time making photos of them. It’s a great example where technologies are helping us to explore the world, even it that ‘world’ is just front of eyes.

Mini or small ramshorn snails are well-known to aquarium lovers for more than a hundred years. I know some people are keeping and breeding them as a live food for their puffer fish or assassin snails. Other than that, I’m not sure what anybody would specially introduce them in a tank. If you need snails, there are plenty of other options available. You can put your eye on prolific MTS snails, bigger ramshorn snails or gorgeous orange rabbit snails.
I would not say that mini ramshorn snails are causing any problems, it’s just that felling that you have something that us out of your control. Presence of these snails in a tank is that exact thing.
However, they are some approaches to ‘control’ or kill them.

First of all, there are some chemical stuff that contains copper. It’s deadly for all snails as well as for the shrimps. Puffer fish, different botia (loaches) fish will happily eat them. These methods will not work for the shrimp tank. Cooper as well as fish will kill you shrimps faster than snails.
I know only one method to get rid of snails in a shrimp tank. It’s introducing one or several marbled self-cloning crayfish. They crayfish will slowly eat your snails and they will not damage your shrimp colony too much. The only disadvantage of these guys is that they will love your plants more than snails and shrimps. I’ve managed to clean two aquariums from mini ramshorn snails using marbled self-cloning crayfish. One aquarium lots all its plants as well, they second tank plants were significantly damaged.

Ok, enough about ‘controlling snails’ Let’s look at the pictures of eggs and snails themselves. You can see tiny snails inside eggs. They are constantly moving in there. Of the clutch is empty, all baby snails are gone to new live.

Adult mini ramshorn snails are not bigger than 5mm, and usually they are under 3mm in size.