NH Tour Thailand - racing snails that reproduce in freshwater?

Filopaludina in the biotope

The ponds here are typical for the area around Khao Lak. Here live large numbers of tiger lidded snails (Filopaludina sumatrensis polygramma), which we also have in our store. It was really nice to see them in the wild! The tiger lidded snails live here together with bubble snails, nubby lidded snails and many giant apple snails.

Filopaludina sumatrensis polygramma biotope photo

Threadfishes and glass shrimps

We also spotted mosaic threadfish and glass shrimp. It was interesting to observe that the glass shrimp all occurred relatively close to shore. Whenever you moved, they would jump out of the water onto the grass - it was enough to walk by and they would hop onto the grass. We think this is their instinct to save themselves from the voracious fish: They jump out of the water briefly, wait until the danger is over, and then quietly scramble back. A very interesting behavior, and cool to watch!

Filopaludina sumatrensis polygramma biotope picture

Here you can see the threadfish nicely, and also water hyacinths (introduced as neophytes in Thailand) from the genus Eichhornia, which we know well from garden ponds.

Many, many small tadpoles

This picture I like to call "tadpole puddle" ... that was very crass in Thailand - here was real life in the water! Here we had a road, there were cars driving from time to time, and this had created a puddle. Here live well and gladly 5,000 tiny tadpoles. In general, one sees an enormous number of frogs here, again and again one runs over the way. And, of course, a correspondingly large number of tadpoles, in practically every body of water, no matter how small.

Tadpole puddle

Here you can see the tadpole a little bit better, and on the next photo I simply photographed an area of 10x10 cm. Here you can see well, how many there are: well and gladly 200 animals - alone on such a small area.

Tadpoles in a somewhat advanced stage

Racing snails - in a freshwater pond!

In the next habitat we found a large number of racing snails sitting on a rock, which they obviously grazed. It is interesting that this biotope carried fresh water. Here you can see nubby limpets in addition to the limpets. I was not familiar with these particular racing snails. At first glance they looked like staghorn snails, but the shells are perfectly smooth, with no nubs. The shells were pink, black striped, patterned...I picked some up too and am taking a closer look at these. As we all know, most racing snails need seawater for their larvae to develop. Clearly, however, this pond had no connection to the sea, so this form may actually reproduce in fresh water like the barge snails from the genus Theodoxus. The water in this small lake was green, and everywhere we saw algae coverings. The snails found a very richly laid table here and fed enthusiastically.

Racing snails in a closed freshwater pond!

Here again a close-up of the beautifully colored, cute racing snails.

Again there were masses of shell flowers to admire.

Many, many colorful Guppies ... everywhere in the city

By the way, in the whole city you can find in front of almost every house and every store a bucket with a water lily or one or two shell flowers. In really each of these containers sit guppies, which take care of possibly appearing mosquito larvae. These are by no means wild forms like Endler guppies, but sometimes really beautiful high-bred guppies. Partly the guppies sit in smallest containers of only 5 liters. Also trumpet snails and post horn snails are well represented there.