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Prudovik (Limnaea)

Meet Limnaea or pond snail! A gastropod mollusk, whose homeland is the countries of Europe, Asia, North America.

The main difference between the pond snail and some other species gastropods is not only in appearance. The fact is that this mollusk breathes not with gills, but with lungs! Therefore, it can often be found on the surface of the aquarium.

The appearance of the pond snail is as follows: the snail has an elongated, rounded shell shape.

The top of the shell is pointed and has a right slope. The size of the mollusk: it grows up to 50 millimeters in height, and the total diameter of the shell is up to 28 millimeters. As you can see, friends, this is a rather large freshwater snail.

The pond snail also has eyes that are located on the outside of the triangular flat tentacles. The “leg” is relatively short, but rather broad. Basic color: the body of the mollusk itself is gray or grayish-green in color, and the shell is yellow, light yellow or dirty yellow. This snail is not demanding on the quality of water!

As for food, the pond snail, like many types of gastropod mollusks, is omnivorous. He eats the remnants of fish food and their waste products, loves fallen parts that begin to rot. Also, these snails are scavengers and can dispose of dead fish that have begun to decompose. There is only one "minus" in these mollusks - their indefatigable, downright wild appetite! They are constantly chewing! They love succulent plants very much, so keep that in mind, friends! Therefore, I highly recommend planting plants with hard leaves, such as pondweed, in the aquarium: these snails do not like hard plants.

As for the reproduction of pond snails, everything is somewhat simpler for them than for other species. The fact is that pond snails are hermaphrodite mollusks! At a certain period, these snails hang their eggs on the tips of plant leaves. These icicle cocoons are quite easy to spot. Each cocoon contains up to a hundred eggs. All masonry matures within 25-30 days.

This is such an interesting snail! There is a lot of controversy about keeping a pond snail in an aquarium. Some argue that this is an evil mollusk, which, apart from trouble, brings nothing else to the aquarium. Others simply do not advise placing it in an aquarium. In general, how many people - so many opinions! The main thing is to regulate their number and that's it! Remove snail eggs from in time. Moreover, the time for finding the caviar of this snail is almost a whole month!

On this I say goodbye to you, dear friends! All the best to you and see you soon!

Pond snails are freshwater lung mollusks distributed throughout the world. This family belongs great amount species, but among them the most famous is the common pond snail, which has the most big sizes.

Large individuals in length reach 7 centimeters. These snails live in ponds, small lakes and river backwaters from spring to autumn.

Large mollusks crawl quite interestingly along the bottom of the reservoir and aquatic plants. Most a large number of pond snails is found in mid-summer among water lilies.

These molluscs are omnivores. Crawling over aquatic plants, they scrape off algae from them with the help of their radula, and at the same time eat the smallest living creatures that come across on the way. The pond snails are very voracious, they eat not only plant and animal food, but also carrion.

Often, pond snails rise to the surface of the water, are suspended from the bottom of the water film with the help of a wide sole, and slowly swim in this position. Pond snails rise to the surface of the water for a reason. Although they live in water, they breathe, like all lung mollusks, with the help of lungs, which is why they must rise and take air into their lungs. When a mollusk takes a breath of air, its respiratory opening, which leads to the lung cavity, is wide open. The presence of lungs indicates that land mollusks are the ancestors of pond snails, and they returned to the water a second time.


Prudoviki are freshwater molluscs.

Reproduction of pond snails

In the process of mating, pond snails mutually fertilize each other, since they are bisexual creatures. The eggs of pond snails are long, transparent, gelatinous cords that are attached to a variety of underwater objects. Caviar can even attach itself to another pond snail.

Caviar has a complex structure - the egg cell is immersed in a mass of protein, and on top it is protected by a double shell. In turn, the eggs are in a mucous mass and dressed in a special shell or cocoon. A strand departs from the inside of the shell, which is attached to the outer shell of the egg with the second end, that is, it turns out that it is suspended from the wall of the cocoon. Such a complex structure of eggs is characteristic of many types of molluscs.


Thanks to this structure, the egg is provided with nutrients and protected from exposure external environment. Inside the eggs, pond snails develop without a free-swimming larva stage. Most likely, this structure of eggs in pond snails is due to their connection with land ancestors, where such adaptations were more important than in water. The size of the clutch and the number of eggs in it can vary considerably. Sometimes there are up to 270 eggs in one cocoon.

The pond snails differ markedly among themselves, and their size, color, thickness and shape of the shell can vary significantly. There are both large individuals and almost dwarf ones that have not matured due to poor nutrition or unfavorable conditions. external factors. In some individuals, the shell consists of thick walls, while in others the shell is very thin and fragile, it breaks at the slightest impact. The whorls and shape of the mouth are very different. The color of the body and legs can vary from sandy yellow to blue-black.


Due to this tendency to variability of pond snails, a huge number of varieties of mollusks have formed within the species. Therefore, even scientists find it difficult to determine whether a particular individual is just a variety or a new subspecies.

Types of pond snails

In our reservoirs, not only ordinary pond snails are often found, but also another species - eared pond snail. In addition, the marsh pond snail and the egg-shaped pond snail live in stagnant water.

By 6-7 months, small pond snails reach sexual maturity, and they live for about 2 years. An egg cocoon can contain from 4 to 25 eggs. Young individuals develop over 10-20 days.

Big pond snail - an inhabitant of fresh water. It has a cone-shaped, spirally twisted shell with 4-5 whorls, a sharp apex and a large opening - the mouth. The shell serves as protection for the soft parts of the body of the mollusk; muscles are attached to it from the inside. The shell consists of lime covered with a layer of greenish-brown horn-like substance. In body pond snail three main parts can be distinguished: the torso, head and leg, but there are no sharp boundaries between them. Through the mouth protrudes the head, the front part of the body and the leg. Leg at pond snail muscular. When undulating muscle contractions run along its sole, the mollusk moves. Leg pond snail located on the ventral side of the body (hence the name of the class - gastropods).

The body repeats the shape of the shell, closely adhering to its inner surface. Outside, it is covered with a skin fold - a mantle. In front, the body passes into the head. A mouth is placed on the underside of the head, and two sensitive tentacles are located on its sides. From touching them, the mollusk quickly draws its head and leg into the shell. Near the bases of the tentacles on the head are located along the eye.

    Features of life processes: Prudovik feeds on aquatic plants. In the pharynx he has a muscular tongue covered with hard teeth. Prudovik from time to time sticks out his tongue and scrapes with it, like a grater, the soft parts of plants, which he swallows. Through the pharynx and esophagus, food enters the stomach and then into the intestine. The intestine curves in a loop-like manner inside the body and ends near the edge of the mantle with an anus. Unlike all previously studied animals at pond snail there is a digestive gland, the liver, whose cells produce digestive juice. Thus, digestive system pond snail more difficult than that of an earthworm.

    Breathing is pulmonary. Periodically rising to the surface of the water, it fills the mantle cavity with fresh air through a round breathing hole. The walls of the lung are densely braided with blood vessels, here the blood is enriched with oxygen and carbon dioxide is released. Within an hour, the mollusk rises for breathing 7-9 times. Next to the lung is a muscular heart, consisting of two chambers - the atrium and the ventricle. Their walls alternately contract (20-30 times per minute), pushing blood into the vessels. Large vessels pass into the thinnest capillaries, from which blood exits into the space between the organs. Thus, unlike annelids the circulatory system of the mollusk is not closed, since it communicates with the body cavity and the blood does not always flow through the vessels. From the body cavity, blood is collected in a vessel suitable for the lung, enriched with oxygen and enters the atrium. Blood pond snail colorless. The excretory organs are represented by one kidney. main part nervous system pond snail constitutes a peripharyngeal cluster of nerve nodes. Nerves depart from them to all organs of the mollusk.

    Reproduction: Hermaphrodite. Lays a large number of eggs enclosed in transparent slimy cords. Which are attached to underwater plants. Eggs hatch into small mollusks with thin shells.

Family member freshwater shellfish group of sedyacheskoye. It has an elongated, strongly pointed shell towards the apex, curled to the right, as a rule, thin and translucent. The volutes of the shell expand very rapidly and the latter, the so-called belly, occupies the largest part of the shell. Its color is pale yellowish.
The pond snail belongs, like the coil, to the number of mollusks with pulmonary respiration and therefore from time to time floats to the surface to inhale atmospheric air. Its body is greenish-dark gray with yellow spots. The head is equipped with two triangular flat tentacles, at the base on the outer side of which there are eyes. The leg is shorter than the coil leg, but much wider. From the leg, the body inside the shell rises upward in a spiral and forms a kind of sac closer to the shell opening, containing a mass of vessels and serving as a respiratory organ. On the right side of it is an air inlet, which is closed by tightly closing muscles. The hole and the entire respiratory organ is easily visible when the animal, crawling over the plant, turns and often crawls almost completely out of the shell. This often happens at a time when the pond snail, like a coil, crawls with its foot on the surface of the water, which it does in order to breathe atmospheric air.
Under the head is a mouth opening, consisting of the upper jaw and two lateral sickle-shaped ones. Placed right here long tongue, which rakes in algae. This is especially clearly seen when the pond snail crawls along the glass of the aquarium.
Pond snails are bisexual animals, and therefore they can be found clinging 6-10 pieces together. Pond snails lay their eggs on the lower surface of floating leaves, on glass in an aquarium, and on various objects. Caviar is connected not in the form of a cake, but in a worm-like or oval shape, similar to an icicle. From May to August they lay up to 20 such icicles, and each of the icicles contains 20-100 eggs. The eggs are transparent. The development of the embryo proceeds rapidly, and after a few days the embryo, covered with ciliated hairs, begins to rotate rapidly.
The emergence of snails from eggs takes place no earlier than twenty, and sometimes even after forty days, which, in all likelihood, depends both on the temperature of the water and on the strength of the light.
With the gelatinous mass of eggs of these snails, a remarkable phenomenon is sometimes observed. It is covered with some kind of mold - small cilia with a pin-shaped thickening at the end, apparently, lily-of-the-valley suvoys. These beings seem to contribute to the destruction of this mass.
The snail reaches a large size, and therefore it is not very convenient for the aquarium. This inconvenience is increased by the fact that it grows so rapidly and a short time reaches large sizes.
Together with the speed of growth, this snail is characterized by voracity, the victims of which are aquarium plants, and plants that are distinguished at the same time by softness and juiciness are especially preferred. In his youth, the pond snail is not dangerous, since he is small and his appetite is negligible.
Prudoviki are able to eat the corpses of their own brethren.
The same genus of pond snails also includes Limnea stagnalis (common pond snail), even larger than the one above.

In this article, we will consider who a pond snail is, what features it has, where it is found, and much more about this wonderful mollusk. What types of pond snails exist and what do they look like.

Any from pond snails, whether ordinary, small or large, is a snail that lives in ponds and gardens where there is enough moisture.

Large and small pond

The large pond snail belongs to the class of gastropods, which is the most numerous and diverse in comparison with other classes of gastropods. There are more than 90 thousand species of such mollusks in nature, and their habitat is not only ponds, but also the sea and land.

A large pond snail is about 5 cm long and many distinctive features from brothers.

Let's talk about the external structure of a large pond snail. It consists of three parts that are noticeable and perfectly distinguishable from each other. The body outside the shell is covered with a mantle to protect the internal mucosa, the shell of a mollusk is twisted for convenience in a spiral of 5 turns. This structure of the shell provides reliable protection of the body from irritants, mechanical damage. . The sink contains lime for the basis of the structure of spirals, and covers it from above organic matter horn-like type (this is on the horns of cattle, etc.).

Due to the structure of the shell, he received an asymmetric body for better accommodation in the "protection", the connection of the shell with the body is carried out due to the muscle. The muscle ensures that the animal is drawn into the shell, and with the help of a pronounced leg, the mollusk can crawl back.

In internal structure pond snails of any type, everything is arranged simply. The main organs are:

  1. digestive complex;
  2. leg;
  3. eyes;
  4. excretory and respiratory system;
  5. sole and mucus secretion glands.

The snail feeds on plant food in a crushed form, then food from the tongue (has a “grater”) passes into the throat, is processed by the secretion of splitting and processed in the stomach and intestines.

The circulatory system is open, and the molluscs move due to the powerful leg, which glides over any surface thanks to the secret secreted by the glands.

These animals are unique and do not need to be killed. . They don't harm a person, nor gardens, because they feed on plant foods that are easily processed (that is, weeds of the ephemeral type (wheatgrass, wood lice). Snails also have healing properties, they are proper nutrition and application secrete mucus that nourishes human skin and regenerates epithelial cells.

Small pond snail

Who are the puddlers in general, you know from the previous paragraphs, now we will talk about small things. In nature, there are several small pond snails:

Small snails are in all gardens, are small in size and beautiful appearance. Be supportive of snails, they do no harm, more good.

common pond snail

There is an ordinary pond snail in middle lane- Russia, Europe. The pond snail has a large size, one shell is 7 cm, not including the body. The pond snail breathes with nothing more than miniature lungs, the circulatory system is not closed, they feed on hard plant foods, detritus and midges. External structure does not differ from a large pond snail, except that the body does not always correspond to the size of the shell, sometimes smaller than the shell. Shell color - mother-of-pearl, brown. Body color - brown, gray, white.

Snails can easily survive both in nature and in the artificially created environment of a terrarium, aquarium. The snail moves thanks to the secretion of mucus and the outer sole, which allows it to move quickly enough on various distances. Snail mucus is rarely used in cosmetology, but most often the mollusk is kept for decoration.

Mollusks are attached to people - breeders, so if you fell in love with a snail, then do not give it to others, otherwise the weak heart of the animal will not stand it.

And now let's take a look at the photo of the pond

Snails big pond