Yellow Spotted Rabbit Snail (Tylomelania towutica) Species Profile & Care Guide

Yellow Spotted Rabbit Snails are one of the rarest snails in the aquarium hobby. The Rabbit name comes from their rabbit-like faces and drooping antennae that resemble a rabbit's ears. However, the similarity to an elephant is also apparent with their wrinkled, rubbery-looking skin and long snouts. These snails are undoubtedly unique in appearance in several aspects.

Yellow Spotted Rabbit Snails are some of the largest freshwater snails in the world. Since they can grow so large, they need room to move, so it's a good idea to have a big tank and avoid overcrowding or dense vegetation in your aquarium.

These snails move slowly and are calm in their behaviour, so it would be best to keep them together with tank mates equally peaceful and non-aggressive.

It would be better to keep these snails in a tank with very fine-grained gravels or a sand substrate because Rabbit Snails enjoy burrowing themselves in the sand, and later resting with just their head popping out from the sand.

Yellow Spotted Rabbit Snails possess black bodies with a striking yellow-spotted pattern, and their shells differ from bronze to a very dark brown, which fades into a creamy white colour on some specimens. Their shells are long and spiral-shaped and taper towards a point at the end. These snails seem curious by nature, and each snail uses its elongated, muscular foot to pull itself around on the aquarium glass or the aquarium decor.

Yellow Spotted Rabbit Snail

Natural Habitat of the Yellow Spotted Rabbit Snail

Yellow Spotted Rabbit Snails are endemic to the freshwater mountain lakes of Towuti, Matano, Lontoa, Mahalona, Masapi and Poso in the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in Southeast Asia. They inhabit warm and quite alkaline waters with a sandy substrate which is often littered with decaying vegetation.

Other Snails of interest

Diet

Yellow Spotted Rabbit Snails are excellent scavengers consuming soft algae that grow on the glass of the aquarium and hard surfaces. They also enjoy eating decaying plant matter, which has found its way to the bottom of the tank. However, you should not limit what they eat to just these things.

The Yellow Spotted Rabbit Snail will accept anything from dried food such as flakes, spirulina wafers, algae wafers and tablets to sinking pellets, earthworm pellets, algae pellets and even frozen bloodworms.

You should also offer your Rabbit Snails vegetables on the odd occasion. They will appreciate things like cucumber, spinach, blanched zucchini and lettuce. Also, it is suitable to support their natural feeding habit with supplements that contain sufficient calcium.

Breeding the Yellow Spotted Rabbit Snail

The Yellow Spotted Rabbit Snails become sexually mature when they are around 4 cm long. They do not grow very fast, so it can take them up to 1 year to become adults.

It is usual for Yellow Spotted Rabbit Snails to breed inside freshwater aquariums providing the water conditions are right. However, their breeding is not as rampant like other freshwater snails, and they have a meagre rate of reproduction, so even if you keep them in large groups, they will not over-populate the aquarium.

These snails give birth to live snails and produce one round white pod every 4 to 6 weeks or so, inside there will be one, two, or on the odd occasion maybe even three baby snails. The baby snails will exit the pod within a few minutes of the birth and will be fully formed miniatures of the adults.

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