snails in the 45

my new tank started off with the ramshorn snails. They are hard to spot. Like to crawl around under the leaf litter, of course. Here's one in the background on the underside of a buce leaf.

I kept an eye out for them the first few days, to make sure they were okay with conditions, and got a few closer pics

Then transferred in the apple snail- it's grown so much bigger! but I was concerned because for a day it didn't move. Floating at the surface. I took it out- no stink (and found out they just happen to chill like this sometimes).

I dropped in a piece of blanched spinach on a glass bead sinker. Apple snail was in the corner for hours over that spinach.

(and when I pulled up the fragment of spinach it left behind, found a tiny ramshorn was enjoying it, too)

Now I find myself in the basement a lot, watching the apple snail crawl around the tank...

particularly interesting when it navigates narrow sticks

or the underside of leaves

I never thought I'd be so taken with a snail... if it decides to eat plants, well I hope it goes for the subwassertang and leaves the buces alone. I can't imagine it would munch on tough anubia or java fern.

While speaking of snails, here's two I lost recently. The biggest pond snail from my window tank. I've seen a few smaller ones show up since... And the other is my last 'tomato' nerite snail. I found it when re-rooting a crypt parva, the tweezers clinked against something in the substrate and I nudged out the loose operculum. Didn't recognize what it was at first. Then went looking and found the empty shell.

Oh well. It was at best guess over three years old.