Gold Inca Snails

I got two new pets for my fish tank!  They are gold Inca snails.  The bigger one that you can see above is named Golden.  The smaller one in the picture below is named Little Golden.  I got them Saturday night.

Snails are great.  They eat algae so they will help clean our tank.  Our plecostomus died, so our tank is getting a little dirty.  They should find plenty of algae to eat in our tank, but we can also give them algae pellets.

My snails are a gold color, which is one of the Green Bay Packers colors.  They like to hang out near our green plant, so I’m pretty sure they are Packer fans.  They will be cheering for the Packers in the Super Bowl.

From what I’ve seen of Golden and Little Golden so far, I think they are nocturnal.  They move around a lot more around bedtime.  Gold Inca snails are native to South America.

Snails are in a group of animals called mollusks.  They are related to slugs.  They are in a group of mollusks called gastropods.  “Gastro” means stomach, and “pod” means foot, so gastropods use their stomach for a foot!  The bottom of a snail that sticks out of their shell and that it walks on is called its foot.

Yesterday, Golden climbed up the glass on the aquarium.  We took a picture of the bottom of his foot.  After we took this picture, Golden got scared of our camera, let go of the glass, and floated down to the bottom of the tank.

My snails are a lot of fun to watch.  They move very slowly, but they do move around.  We made a video of Golden walking across the bottom of the tank.  At one point you can see him open his mouth.

Gold Inca Snail Crawling on Vimeo.

Or watch on YouTube.  (If you are using an iPod, use this link.)

About Raymie

Raymie is a 11 year old boy who loves animals. He is always looking around for new animals. He wants to be a zookeeper someday.
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11 Responses to Gold Inca Snails

  1. Molly's Mom says:

    I think I could watch Golden walk all day long. Very relaxing.

  2. Grandma Miller says:

    Wow Raymie! I never would have thought that I would consider a snail to be beautiful, but I loved watching the video. Seeing it open it’s mouth and walk along the rocks was amazing. Thanks for sharing this with us. Nice music, too.

  3. Emily's mom says:

    Very cool Raymie! I’m so happy you told Emily and I about this. We’ll be checking often for more posts. 🙂

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  7. Kay says:

    Wow Raymie thank you for this great post on Gold Inca snails! We have 5 aquariums and we have snails in all of them, but we didn’t know what type of snail they were. Your blog has answered our question! Here in Australia we don’t follow the Super Bowl, but I am sure your snails were cheering on your team! Keep up the great blogging!

  8. Tracy says:

    I had a snail that looked like the one in video, pet store guy told me and my friend that it would go great in my guppy tank, it killed and ate all 10 of my fish. Yes it killed them, my husband saw it. That snail doubled in size in 2 weeks. And was very fast in getting from one end to the other, yours looks like it’s going in slow motion.

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