Have I just made a massive Oops?

[Baccus]

Ages ago I purchased some Waterhouse snails and some Essington snails from Aquagreen, (at separate times) after putting them in my 4ft cory tank that is pretty much never disturbed and only gets the occasional plant trimming and weekly water changes (along of course with daily feeds) I never saw the snails again. I had assumed that the Essington and Waterhouse snails just didn't like my water and had gone to the great snail pond in the sky. Fast forward to approx. 3 weeks ago I happened to find a windfall of local notopala snails that had been left high and dry after receding flood waters. I rescued as many as I could find in the thick sticky mud and ended up putting these snails in various tanks including my 4ft cory tank.

Just now I was doing a water change on the cory tank and was happy to see one of the new large notopalas on the glass and spied a much smaller snail nearby, the smaller snail got my attention because it didn't look like the usual ramshorns or MTS. Sure enough on closer inspection it is a little notopala, BUT I have seen baby notopalas of my local species previously and I don't believe that the ones I found this morning (7 after looking closely all over the front of the tank so goodness only knows how many are hidden away in the jungle), could possibly be offspring from the most recent notopalas.

Now I am worried that by some fluke either the Waterhouse or Essingtons have survived and bred and now I have added a similar species that may well cross breed with them and I will never be able to tell them apart.

Here are the ones I found this morning all of varing sizes the one where I photographed it from above seems the biggest baby.

I just don't believe that these little snails could have grown so fast from miniscule newborn to this in just about 3 short weeks, even if the adults had dropped their babies as soon as they where placed in the tank.

 

[Grubs]

I think its possible.  These live bearing snails spit out baby snails from the brood pouch that are already a couple of mm across.  They are not growing up from pinhead size like the snails that hatch from eggs.

Edit:  and congrats!       I do sympathise on the pain of potentially mixing species you cant separate though.

Edited March 11, 2016 by Grubs

[Baccus]

I thought I had a photo of the previous baby notopalas taken against a ruler, but the only photo I can find is of this guy hiding out on the thermometer

Upon a bit of searching it appears that all the tanks that I placed these most recent notopalas into have got babies in them, and all of varying size.

[Baccus]

Another baby taken from another tank