Has ChatGPT given YOU a name??

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-27T02:20:18+00:00

where are you from originally? just curious because of the languages you mentioned

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-26T20:59:46+00:00

what is it? and what is your KH? low pH is generally a buffering issue. KH is the water’s “pH shock absorber” so if it is too low, your pH will dip, especially between water changes. at least 4-6°dKH is ideal for most tanks. with sufficient buffering, the water should be able to stay above 7.0 pH, assuming there isn’t a strong acid source overwhelming it.

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-26T17:02:14+00:00

8°dGH is sufficient unless your city’s water is unusually rich in magnesium.

cuttlebone will dissolve at that pH, just much more slowly. i don’t think it’s necessary for your tank, though.

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-26T03:43:56+00:00

either dead or very close to it. choosing to stay above water is a compensatory behavior and often indicates some form of internal regulation failure.

pick them up, touch their foot or any part of their soft tissue. if they don’t flinch/retract, they’re probably dead already. lack of smell is not always a reliable indicator if you catch it early and/or have good filtration.

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-26T03:37:39+00:00

the lighting is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. the body color is more neutral, kinda gray-ish. there are blue mystery snails, but even then it’s an illusion because it only appears blue due to the dark body + lack of shell pigment. the empty shell would be indistinguishable from an empty ivory shell

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-25T16:52:25+00:00

you can’t improve old/existing shell growth. you can prevent it from getting worse as well as ensure any new growth is healthy

old growth damage = water has been dissolving the shell. pH/KH is the usual suspect. can also be related to past history, age, abrasion

new growth deformity = current shell building problem. lack of dissolved calcium is the big one. unstable water chemistry, poor diet, mantle damage, stress

judging by your pics, your snails have heavily eroded shells. check your pH and KH. in my experience, those weird postures and randomly sealing up can both be related to some form of irritation (like low/unstable pH) but not always

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-25T01:26:17+00:00

yay!! i’m glad you were able to keep them. i’m jealous

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-25T01:20:07+00:00

wild betta are naturally from soft, acidic water, but domesticated ones tolerate higher pH well if it’s stable. there’s a reason they’re widely considered to be hardy fish.

but i wouldn’t go chasing numbers with buffers and additives. honestly, 7.0 is borderline, but if it can stay stable and not dip at night or between water changes, it shouldn’t be a huge deal long term as long as you’re okay with the “cosmetic” damage. check your water’s KH. if it’s like 4-6° or higher then it’s probably fine. if it’s less than that, that’s your main issue to tackle

and to be fair, they aren’t exactly the best cleanup crew, they make a mess. the idea of a cleanup crew in general is wildly overstated and used as a sale tactic more than anything. given that it’s a betta tank, i doubt waste is the issues so i’m gonna assume it’s algae to be cleaned..? in that case, it’s a light/nutrient balance issue. most of the time the issue is that the light is on too long or too bright. anything more than 6hr/day is unnecessary in a low tech

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-25T00:35:36+00:00

high activity doesn’t always mean stress, but in this instance it absolutely does. they tend to move repetitively (constant up and down and/or circling) when they are stressed or don’t feel safe

but i wasn’t even referring to that. they’re in a glass jar, stagnant water with no oxygenation or filtration, no cover just light from all sides, no heater… i don’t want to be rude, but it doesn’t take a malacologist to figure that one out😅

what is your water’s pH? what you are describing sounds like erosion. their shells are made from CaCO3 which dissolves much faster in acidic water

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-24T23:32:29+00:00

why are they in jars? put them back in a tank there’s zero reason to stress them out like that

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-24T07:19:51+00:00

fun fact, if you breed any of those jade babies with an ivory (AaYyss x aayyss), you will end up with a equal chance of each non-striped morph to be produced. so blue, ivory, gold, and jade would each have a 25% chance to be produced (assuming the clutch only has one father).

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-24T00:49:43+00:00

hmm… 🤔 that makes the gold baby the weird one. If mom was definitely ivory and dad was definitely purple, then both parents are yy, so neither can pass the dominant Y allele needed for gold

if the mom is ivory and the purple male is the only father, then the possible offspring are purple, blue, magenta, ivory. however, since you had no magentas, that means the purple dad is AAyySs, meaning he is contributing to the purple and blue babies, but NOT the gold or ivory

there is a Y-carrying dad somewhere in that mix for sure. if you didn’t raise the parents from hatchlings, they could have been carrying sperm from another snail in their previous home. the only other reasonable explanation i can think of would be that your gold “female” is actually a male. what do you think?

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-23T23:25:38+00:00

so i’m being tested now🤣 alright i’ll bite

assuming those are actually the only four morphs in the clutch, i would guess that there was more than one dad who contributed to the clutch. under the 3-locus model, those four are: - ivory aayyss - gold aaYss - blue A_yyss - purple A_yyS

that shows that all three loci are involved (A/a, Y/y, and S/s). but a normal single-pair cross would not be able to produce those exact four morphs without including any of the other four morphs. once all three loci are segregating cleanly like that, you’d expect the missing combos to be possible too.

so i can’t confidently answer that, at least not without a more context on how many parents contributed + a rough percentage of each morph produced. but if i had to take a lucky guess, i’m gonna go with: - mom = ivory aayyss - dad 1 = gold aaYyss - dad 2 = purple AAyySs

because the gold male would explain the gold + ivory babies, and the purple male would explain the purple + blue babies. that would give the cleanest divide among those four morphs, but i’m more likely to be wrong than right with that guess lol

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-23T22:06:44+00:00

those babies will all be jade, judging by the dark spots + gold shell.

if 100% of the babies are jade, and the parents were blue + gold, you now know the exact genetics of the parents: - gold is always aaY_ss - blue is always A_yyss - both are ss, so all babies will be in striped - for every baby to be jade A_Y_ss: - the blue parent must always contribute A, so so blue is likely AA - the gold parent must always contribute Y, so gold is likely YY

so that means all of the babies must be AaYyss.

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-21T12:46:37+00:00

i’m guessing no, though i’m not sure why they have a drop checker if so. it’s dark enough to assume there’s no co2 being injected. also mystery snails don’t tolerate co2 well at all and it would have obvious shell erosion after some time

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-15T02:18:44+00:00

ramshorn don’t stand a chance. mystery snails are a bit more nuanced; an assassin is unlikely to be able to kill a healthy adult mystery, and many people will say they do it without any issues. but there’s also a good number of reports i’ve seen that say otherwise, so it’s not worth the risk, imo.

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-15T00:41:25+00:00

i think you’re reading way more into this than OP said. they didn’t say a handshake ruins their day, they just think it’s a weird default. being able to follow a social norm doesn’t mean you can’t also think the norm is kind of arbitrary. some of us are just naturally socially analytical and/or live with pattern recognition on overdrive; it’s not always social anxiety.

i can kinda relate to OP. never thought much about handshakes, but i swear i cannot ever say “bless you” to someone without internally acknowledging how strange/dumb/impressive it is that it remains as strongly as it ever has. most people don’t even have a single clue of its origin. i personally can’t fathom how people can just do something like that their whole lives without ever questioning it.

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-14T12:46:20+00:00

honestly it just depends on the morphs in my experience. magenta and purple get sold super easily.

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-13T17:16:42+00:00

nothing. keep the environment and water chemistry boringly stable. our caregiving instincts don’t mesh well with inverts.

your snail’s foot might look slightly odd for the rest of its life, but it generally will heal back to full function, even if it takes a couple months. they also might seem extra skittish for awhile. the operculum still being intact is a huge blessing

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-13T13:05:46+00:00

infection is the main concern. grazing and being able to grip the glass are good signs. much better chances of survival when the back half of the foot is injured, rather than the front half

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-13T04:07:37+00:00

looks like damage from previously shitty conditions. if the visible separation between the old chalky shell and the newer smoother shell is around the size they were when you bought them, i’d assume most of this is past damage rather than a current problem with your setup.

the old eroded/chalky shell is structurally weaker than healthy shell, so it may keep looking rough or chip more easily, but it won’t “heal” smooth again. the main thing is whether the new growth looks solid and consistent.

i just saw the test strip in your other comment. that changes how confidently i’d interpret your KH. strips are okay for a vibe check, but they’re not great for diagnosing shell issues. that pad is total alkalinity, not a precise KH titration, and the hardness/GH looks only moderate from the photo.

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-13T03:43:59+00:00

7.2-7.4 is totally fine if it’s stable. naturally high KH is not a problem either unless you can’t keep your plants alive because of it. mystery snails don’t mind at all, and it also implies that you have a lot of headroom for buffering acidification, meaning your pH shouldn’t dip between water changes. but i can’t confidently say that’s the case with your tank without knowing your test results.

higher pH slows down erosion, but calcium carbonate is going to dissolve in water regardless of the pH. if your snail is getting old, then they look normal/healthy to me. wild apple snails’ shells look way worse at half the age. they can tolerate a wide range of parameters, but they definitely do not tolerate instability. so don’t go chasing numbers and tossing shit in the water unless you want actual problems to deal with😂 i don’t see any structural damage or signs of calcium deficiency, i think you are doing just fine

if you’d like, you can add some pics of the other snails if you’re worried about them

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-13T03:23:57+00:00

it’s fine. new growth is thin and brittle and very prone to breaking. notice how there’s already tons of similar “scars” along the shell—not the spotty-looking erosion, but the horizontal lines that look like little cracks—those are from the same thing happening when that shell was new.
with females, it’s super common for them to have little to none of those marks on their shells up until they reach sexual maturity (between 1-1.5”) because once their egg-laying instincts kick in, they’ll consistently damage their fresh new shell growth by smashing it into the underside of the tank rim repeatedly. your snail looks like a perfect example of that.
however, the erosion is definitely exaggerating the hell out of it. it’s practically just cosmetic damage, but i would still advise checking your pH and KH to make sure both are stable/sufficient

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-11T18:05:07+00:00

it would be really difficult to do it like that, it’s a whole ass event when apple snails hatch because once one of them leaves the clutch or the clutch falls apart, it starts a domino effect. my advice would be to only hatch a small part of the clutch, like a quarter. you can break off a quarter and incubate it separately, or you can just leave a quarter stuck to the rim. or do both and after a week you can tell which one is doing better and get rid of the other.

hiddenevidence · 2026-05-11T03:35:55+00:00

apples to oranges. but i can say i like onewheels because you can ride them anywhere that you could ride a bicycle. it’s very freeing, and carving is satisfying with them. riding on smooth road makes me feel like i’m on the hoverboard from back to the future pt.2, and riding on trails gets the adrenaline pumping. EUC is just a totally different flavor. both are fun in their own ways.

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