Comments: Neritina natalensis is a beautiful snail that has a light brown shell with black stripes running down it. It's body is grey with black lines running all around the animal.
I have read information from some sources stating that this species lives in freshwater and other sources saying that this is a brackish water species. Since I have kept the snail successfully in both, I'm not sure.
They are and extremely easy animal to keep and will do fine in any tank set up. But to keep them in tip top shape I would recommend you keep them in water with a pH of no less than 7.0, and if you really love these snails you can add some extra calcium to their water in the form of drops or crushed coral gravel. They can tolerate both cool and warm water although they move around much quicker in warmer water. They also appear to be more active at night. The only bad habit they have is that they tend to crawl out of the water from time to time so a secure cover over your tank is a good idea, unless you want snails exploring your home.
They almost exclusively eat algae and do not seem to harm plants at all. I have had them in a very heavily algae grown tank and they cleaned it up in a matter of months, to the point of needing to find extra food sources ( I ended up leaving the tank light on more so that there is a constant source of algae in the tank somewhere). When keeping these snails I suggest having at least some algae in the tank to keep them fed.
When well fed they will lay lots of eggs which in most cases do not hatch. It has been reported that the eggs might hatch in brackish water but there has never been any breeding of this species in captivity as of yet. I am presently keeping the snails in both fresh and brackish water tanks in an attempt to breed them and have not had any young so far. Thier young apparently start out life as free swimming larvae which settle into a crawling life as they get older so if you want to breed them, you better use sponge filters in their tank so you don't suck up any babies.
I feel that these snails are the best snail for freshwater tanks because they are very beautiful, they don't breed, they don't harm plants, they clean up algae very efficiently and they are fun to watch!
I highly recommend this species!
Name: Curtis H.T LeBlanc Comments: Breeding these guys is sort of hard, the babies really do best in brackish and can even do well in full marine conditions. In the wild there is supposed to be a lot of lime stone in the area they are found. It is thought that these snails need this to hatch out. Donya from applesnails.net has had success with breeding nerites I believe with limestone. There are many many many different types of nerites from all over. For example some olive nerites are found in Florida. They have been found in fresh, brackish and full marine conditions.
Name: Marc Comments: I got some Neritina natalensis in a 6.3 pH freshwater tank with lots of plants. I notice that the male (smaller) climbs on top of the female and hitches a ride while the female lays eggs all over the place. I never saw it, but I supose that the male ferterlizes the eggs while they run around. This behavior started a month ago or so and the bright white eggs turn yellow and rot away. No success yet. I suspect I would need slightly salty water. I read somewere that the snails come from South-Africa.
Comment : Hi. I know this topis is a bit old but we've bought 1 zebra snail from pet shop a week ago and today we've noticed that there are lots of babies appearing around. As we have only 1 snail I doubt there was any kind of mating - the only thing I can think of is that the water the snail came with had some eggs in it and now they're hatching like crazy. As it's kind of confusing to read that people have so much troubles hatching them and we already had 3 hatched today only after a week of owning the first one. The water is at constant 26C and it's 6.4PH fresh
Comment : nice article helps me alot. I was wondering what the white spots were. I have 2 snails, had them for 3 months and they are very good algae eater. Although i was wondering how long do they take to hatch. I have a beta in the tank also will that be a danger for the snail eggs?
Comment : Nice informative article on these snails. I acquired a pair of these a couple of months ago, and suddenly had eggs being laid on my driftwood... now my two pieces of driftwood are spotted quite liberally with eggs, and the little ones are hatching and seems to be doing just fine. I'm not really worried about over-population at this point, as I have quite a few fish and a forest of plants, so they're doing a good job of keeping things clean. I haven't had to vacuum my gravel in awhile, nothing ever builds up on the bottom. I'm looking forward to when the little guys get bigger, to see if they are in fact children of the zebra snails, or if they are children of some other snail that snuck in on a plant (highly unlikely, no snails till the zebras, and they laid the eggs).
On another note, my tank water pH stays VERY high, 8.4+ (it's out of the range of my testing kit) and the hardness is high as well. I live in a region that has hard water naturally with lower pH, so if I do a big water change, it drops significantly (back into mid-7s), but then eventually climbs back up. The fish don't seem to mind, they're brilliant in color and lively. I have heard the hard water will cause high pH, but that together they're ok. I thought for awhile that the high pH was caused by a couple of rocks that I was keeping in the tank, but weeks after their removal it's still high. Any ideas what could be causing it, and should I worry? by the way, I keep mostly barbs and tetras.
cheers
\\ Kent
Comment : I have had one of these since Jan 2002. It is now Oct 2006. It is an excellent algae cleaner - I can hear it rasping the glass. I've run out of algae in my tanks it is so efficient and the glass is crystal clear apart from a few eggs it has laid - these are stuck on like superglue!
One thing though, it definitely didn't like the slightly brackish water in my bumblebee goby aquarium.
Comment : I had the problem of wee white eggs showing up in their masses in my fish tank and this article answered my questions exactly so problem - not sorted but understood.
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