How do snails reproduce?

[lyquidphyre]

My boyfriend has three mystery snails and here lately they just crawl all over one another and stay like that.
Thats why I ask cuz everytime we look at them we are trying to figure out what they are doing!

[QTOFFER]

They're probably doing exactly what you think they're doing!

[liquidelusion]

i have 2 of them and they did that for a bit and now i have baby snails crawling around the tank too

[William]

You'll see them get up close to one another, and usually one will extend its tube into the opening of the other.


Remember, if your thinking they may breed.. your water level has to be low. When I had Black Mysteries, I had to keep the water 3 or so inches below the top molding for them to be happy enough with the water level to lay

[lyquidphyre]

Awww baby snails! How cute!

Thanks guys... maybe they will have babies.

The water is about an inch from the top molding right now... maybe they that will work

[tbonem91]

well first the Daddy snail must buy the Mommy snail some flowers and a nice dinner....


Hehe.. I had three apple snail that bred like crazy - I gave the babys to my local petco for them to give to customers. I never saw them in the act but I saw my big male snail strutting his package through the tank on more than one occasion.

[lyquidphyre]

hahahahaha how amusing

I don't mind if they breed because I wanted snails in the 75 Im about to set up.

Plecos don't eat snails do they?

[tbonem91]

I'm not sure but I can tell you this,

when I had my snails breeding, very few of them seemed to grow beyond the BB size even though I would get egg clusters some times once a week.

The other tank mates at the time were my beta, an albino bristlenose pleco, a clown pleco and a couple glassfish tetras.

I can only assume they were getting eaten either by the plecos or by the big snails themselves maybe?

[lyquidphyre]

Well the pleco is in another tank.. but I figured if we had a bunch of snails i could put some in my 29gal with my pleco (when they got big)

The tank mates I have now with the snails are-
One Angel, a blue gourami, and two kissing gourami

hopefully they will be okay

[madasafish]

Yes, plecs will certainly eat the tiny baby snails, as tbonem mentioned. I had very few babies survive to adulthood after my apple snails mated with Queen Arabesque and King Tiger plecs in the tank. Now that there's only a couple of tiny alibino bristlenoses, and they don't seem to make any difference. Don't think the plecs *mean* to do it. The babies are just sort of there.

But once the babies grow larger than a few mm, they'll be too big for the plecs to eat (in all likelihood).