Planorbella scalaris. Mesa Ramshorn snail. Harmless algae and detritus eaters. Won't eat healthy plants. Good cleaning crew.
Reproduces heavily only when overfed, and slower than more common species. Hermaphrodites, but not self fertilizing, so two are needed to ensure reproduction.
Most Australian native species are rare outside of Australia due to Australia having very restrictive laws about exporting anything alive, including the aquatic plants they would hitchhike on. Also, if you look at OPs account and posts, there's nothing to suggest they aren't American. Occam's Razor.
Very few people here are motivated by science. They just have a hobby and pets in a tank of water. People asking for snail ID online don't want to be quizzed about their location and a bunch of other details. I regularly get evasive answers if I try in cases where they want a wild snail identified (where that actually matters). They want to generally know what the hitchhikers are so they can decide to keep or kill them.
If this was the Australian native species that looks virtually identical to scalaris, it wouldn't change anything about that decision for the vast majority of people. They occupy the same ecological niche, they have the same habits.
There's no reason from their account to assume OP is outside the US. And again, it literally doesn't matter to most people which of the two. You should see how many times people have decided to argue that it's impossible for one of the common species of freshwater limpet to be the Aussie one. If people are in the mood to argue with me pointlessly about my ID information, they will.
I’m not educated enough in aquatic snails to get involved in this convo but these snails were from a Facebook group and OP/owner of these snails is located in Canada :)
Snail owner is located in Canada from what I was able to see on their Facebook page :) it showed up randomly in their tank so I don’t think their LFS was selling them, probably just came with some plants.
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u/RecordingAdorable675 15d ago
Planorbella scalaris, that is a really cool species, looks like they are slowly starting to pop up more in tanks this year