Rams horn snails evolve?

[BrownWater]

Do you think rams horn snails can evolve to your water conditions in a year?

I have browns and reds in a tank. For 9-10 months there would be, about half of the total population of snails, large and small snails with white shell deficiencies. Now over the last 2-3 months, I have noticed only a handful of larger snails (literally maybe 5 snails) with the shell deficiencies. All the other small medium and large snails have very nice shells. There have been no chemical changes to the tank, nothing added. Now if I take the snails out and put them in a different tank, the process seems to start itself all over again. If I take 10 heathy snails and put them I a new (little different water) tank, out of 10 only about 5 will live to the 2-5 month mark.

So my question still stands, can ramshorn snails evolve to thrive in a specific water in a years time?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[High5's]

Idk about evolve but adapt yes. What are your water parameters? They would be helpful to figure out what's causing the shell deficiencies.

[Soothing Shrimp]

low ph will pit and eat holes in shells.

[Puddles]

Ramshorns in my caridina tanks always get white shells and die after a while. I think it is a combination of low pH and low gh.

[High5's]

I was reading about running 80 ppm calcium in low ph tank or using cuttle bone for them to graze on.

[BrownWater]

My top water is inhospitable. This week smells like pure bleach. Only tank I can get them to do anything in is a tank with ro water.

Water parameters are something like ph 7.8, gh 12, TDS 550

The ph rises to 8.5-9 once it's out of the tap (3-4 hours later) then literally drops down to 7 in an hour.

And anyone that drinks the tap water gets sick...

Only reason I really asked the question was out of curiosity. I think its interesting that in a year a bag of 25 red ramshorn snails adapted to my water in that tank. They split into reds, browns, leopards, and yellow, brown, and red bodies. I brought the question up to a lfs once and the kid looked at me like I had 10 heads.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Steve R.]

Short-term evolution of your snails is definitely possible, provided you apply strong selective pressure, in your case maybe low calcium carbonate concentrations and low pH. The snail embryos and juveniles are probably more sensitive to these adverse conditions. If a few for the offspring contain mutations that provide an advantage, for example allow build up of the exoskeleton, these should form dominant populations within a short time. This evolved character would constitute an adaptation.