| Living Materials
Information
Snails
(Physa gyrina,
Lymnea columella, Planorbis planorbis, Planorbella trivoluis,
Planorbella duryi, Gyraulus parvus)
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Materials |
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2 or 3 holding tanks |
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8–10 liters of
room temperature water |
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Food
(elodea, spinach, lettuce, or fish food) |
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30 snails |
Procedure
A few days prior to the arrival of the snails, fill the holding tanks
with room temperature water. Open the shipping container immediately upon
arrival and inspect the snails. This is important because during shipping
the snails may have contaminated their environment enough to endanger
their health.
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Snails |
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Rinse off the snails in room temperature water. Place the live snails in
the holding tanks until you are ready to distribute them to the class. Remove
and discard any dead snails. It is sometimes hard to tell if a snail is dead or
alive, but generally if it smells dead, it is dead.
Add food to the holding tanks, such as several leaves of lettuce or spinach,
3 or 4 sprigs of elodea, or 2 pinches of fish food. This will probably be enough food for a week or so, but you will know better by direct observation.
If you must hold the snails for more than a week before distributing them to the class, you
need to do the following at the end of the first week:
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pour off most of the dirty water and replace it with an equal amount of
fresh room temperature water,
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replenish the food supply, and
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remove any dead snails.
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