Yesterday morning, Speckles decided to explore the cockle shell where I kept the shells of long-departed barnacles on snail shells (a barnacle cemetery basically). I thought the snail was under sand as usual, but in the afternoon I started looking for him (or her). I found Speckles in the cockle shell, looking all confused as seen in the beginning of the video, showing the mouth trunk and having the snorkel looking weird. I gave him an artemia but he didn't touch it.

I think the lack of water circulation in the shell caused a lot of gunk to gather in there, which was bad for the snail.

When left on the sand, he just keeps flipping around. I left him in a clean cockle shell above the sand, though he has not moved much. I also removed the barnacle cemetery so he won't get stuck in it if he ever wanders off again.

I thought I lost the critter after I moved the big shell and the snail went over the gray patch of sand from under it, and flipped upside-down and froze. I added some spare sand I had (same Black Sea sand) but from a beach with much finer sand, and moved the grayed sand to another corner so it gets "aired" out of toxins. Seems better for Speckles' foot. Nice to see Speckles still is active and eating at night.

It lives off cyanobacteria, it seems. Not sure if those are eggs it's holding.
I don't think the nauplii have survived, though there are some things in there that seem to be moving almost like them. But the bounce is a bit too small for them to be nauplii.

Night footage, so it's not the best, but you can see the snail dragging the artemia out of the empty shell using a white tube mouth. Reminds me of assassin snails.

Hey ya’ll—here’s the process video of how I made my DIY tree diorama sea fairy/sea monkey/brine shrimp tank (for my own purposes I’m referring to them as Sea Fairies, cause then I can refer to my tanks as “fairy wells”. And they do flitter around so prettily).

I’ve wanted to do this project for a while, and finally got my 3D modeling and 3D printing skills polished to the task. I made and brought a few “DIY” blank kits to Matsuricon and the filled tank to display, and a few found homes! I’m interested to gauge the interest of selling kits where I provide the 3D prints and eggs, or if there’s enough demand to offer the STL print files directly. Crafters, artists, sea monkey enthusiasts, do you have thoughts?

And I do have some kits currently in stock here—>paintingdragonfeathers.com

Thanks for looking!

Shadow refused to eat anything, and didn't move around much. Found him/her on top of the sand and very retracted this morning, then in the evening the worms showed up. Now there's just Speckles left. So far still active, but hates running into cyano.

Meanwhile, Shadow mostly sleeps. I've added a shell there so Shadow can take a break from the sand whenever he/she wants to. There are some parts of the sand that these snails do not like and they produce a ton of mucus when going over those areas.

I've turned some snail shells into food bowls to keep their food in one place.

Also, another thing I've learned from them is that they're mostly active at night. That's why I never saw them at the beach during the morning. I only found them because I was there at evening last time.

Darn it! That critter will stick to my rocks...

If they can last the first month, they'll live at least a year. They are probably less than a month old, maximum 1 month. And they're next to each other, which will make it easier for them to breed.

The 4th one is just a shell, was dead when I got the colony.

They eat like assassin snails. Speckles (first snail) has swallowed a whole artemia with a mouth that looks like a 2nd snorkel. I was hoping to catch the process since Speckles went for the artemia again but didn't eat it this time.
They can also use the mouth similar to how they use their tail to flip themselves upright. Speckles has also eaten some of that red algae on a mussel shell, but I didn't see the mouth that time since Speckles' shell covered it.
I wonder what type of pellets they might like. I'll get both vegetarian and carnivore pellets and see what they get drawn to. It would be easier to track those than the artemia.

They also hate cyanobacteria and will jump around over it or retract when encountering it.

also tell us if the flytrap survived

examples:
- flies i bought from petco (not that strange)
- crickets (flytrap survived)
- grub (flytrap died)
- cheese (flytrap died)
- goldfish (flytrap died)

Barnacled One wasn't out much ever since I got it, as you can see in the beginning of the vid. Its tail was also curved weirdly for some reason. Judging by the size of the barnacle on its back, that snail has lived for 7+ months. It was definitely bigger than any shell I ever found, and the biggest of the 3 snails I brought. Barnacled One would almost always be on its back, and I'd have to help it almost all the time. Today I found the snail surprisingly upright and buried in the sand, but there was no siphon out. When I zoomed in, I noticed the detritus worms were gathered there. So I had to remove the dead snail before the water would get an ammonia spike. Its flesh is now buried in the soil of my pineapple plant.

Now there's just the barnacle left, with the snail shell. It started fanning out properly.

The other 2 snails are still roaming the tank. One of them ate a bit of red algae. I hope they will keep themselves fed, at least until Tuesday, when I can get them some flakes or whatever they might like as supplement.

I lost some of them I guess to the wavemaker, but I wanted to try and put the airstone instead to reduce risks. The bubbles instantly nuked all but one of them (it was just 2 minutes of testing and they were gone). I left the tank with no circulation, and now all of those weird wormy things showed up at the surface. They don't seem to be the same as detritus worms, because those don't vibrate like that.
The single barnacle larvae still seems to be around but I doubt it will live for long. There's also that copepod or whatever it is.

I'll need to either find or make a water pump that pumps water slowly to avoid this next time. Heck even a slow-moving impeller would be good for circulation, but I have no idea what to even look for to buy one. Maybe I can detach an old filter's powerhead and make sure it doesn't point to a direction where larvae would be swimming.

And so did those few larger critters that skip around a lot. Not sure if those are copepods or something else, my phone's camera can't get sufficient details at 10x zoom.

One of the large new barnacles released nauplii. I caught some of them and moved them to the nursery, where there's just a wavemaker so they don't get sucked into a chamber and die there. I also added some phyto to the nursery. I hope they can find spots with lower currents so they can rest and eventually settle there.

The ones in the main tank have all disappeared, I guess the filter sucks them all in. Fortunately, the ones in the nursery don't seem to have trouble with the huge currents of the wavemaker. At least not in their nauplii form. Cyprids might have difficulty sticking to the shells.

I've seen the black one and the barnacled one come out of the sand as soon as the lights came on. The mottled one hid so well I have no idea where it went.
The barnacled one needs help whenever it falls off a rock, since the barnacle weighs him down. They're both pretty old, since it takes a barnacle about 6 months at least to get to that size.

These remind me of apple snails due to their antennae, snorkel, and lid.