This is the picture of our Albino Snail, Gary. For about two weeks after this picture was taken, Gary was presumed dead. He never, ever came out of his shell, he sat around looking dead, and the other fish would sometimes push him around the tank, and to our knowledge, he was dead.We were mildly hopeful that he wasn't, and also lazy, because neither one of us wanted to deal with disposing of the possibly dead snail.
After about two weeks, the snail came to life. He started climbing the walls, crawling around, looking fairly creepy, to be honest. He's got these googly eyes and nose pipe...things.
This morning, Nate was feeding the fish, and he noticed that one of the fish who has been struggling for the past couple of days was not alive anymore, and was, in fact partially inside the shell of Gary. Me, thinking the fish might still have a chance, tapped the snail with the fish net, and watched in horror as our dead fish floated out of his shell with what looked like a bite taken out of him.
Now, while I do know that Gary doesn't have teeth (at least I THINK I know that), I have to admit that it's a little freaky. We also don't think it's the first fish to fall victim to the snail after death.Maybe, instead of naming him Gary, we should have named him Vulture...Hyena...something like that.
You know, aquarium wildlife isn't as serene as you'd think. My little sister Roshini used to have an aquarium. We came back from vacation once to find that there had been a huge fish massacre. The only fish still in the tank was the ugly sucker-fish thing, you know, the one that's supposed to keep the tank clean? Roshini cleaned that tank THOROUGHLY and not one hint of another fish (or frog, or crab!) was found. The sucker-fish later burped up a crab claw.
ReplyDeletePoor 12-year old Roshini. She had nightmares for months. . .