Mystery snail breeding

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Oh wow! I'm sorry for the loss. She sounds beautiful!

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4 of my 5 babies, I have another ivory.

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The 1 blue with the rough shell had since repaired itself.

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She was. I've only seen a couple of other snails as dark as she was, I was hoping she'd have some babies the same colour. I'm guessing I have babies from her, so maybe the genetics are there. Heaven knows if they'll show up though. Can't keep them all to find out either.. too many !

And of course, no real way to know which males she bred with. She could have been pregnant when I got her for all I know. Unless you raise them from the egg and can be sure of who bred who, no real way to know. They haven't figured out the colour genetics yet, far as I know. I've seen some purple ones, and I'd love to get some, but the one store that used to get them no longer does. The guy who was getting them isn't there any more. He got them from some guy who bred them in ponds and simply scooped out a bunch when he wanted some new fish.Trade snails for fish, nice if you have the space !
 
We have babies!! Once they are nickel sized they will be ready to ship!

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So cute when they're newborns aren't they ? Had a clutch break the other day dozens of little ones all over the glass and leaves of the floating plants. I think the floaters are a fave because it keeps them so close to their air supply.
 
Well, after apple snails have mated it won't take that long before egg sacks (plural) will occur above the water surface where they are stuck to a lid or whatever is above the water surface. I've bred those apple snails for many years. Also all kinds of coloration.
 
Not necessarily. I had a group of them once and they flat did not lay any eggs for nearly a year. They mated, they mated again, and again and behaved as normal but did not lay so much as one egg. They had plenty of places to lay too, so it wasn't that they lacked opportunity.

Females can also hold onto male sperm for prolonged periods of time, and people have purchased what they think are virgin females only to have them produce viable eggs months later. And they will also lay eggs that are infertile, if they don't have mates.

Like any animal, they're variable. At one point this summer, I had snails laying at least once a week. Now they have slowed down considerably, but they have not stopped. Just doing it less often. Won't surprise me if they take a break over winter, though I hope they will continue.
 
Not necessarily. I had a group of them once and they flat did not lay any eggs for nearly a year. They mated, they mated again, and again and behaved as normal but did not lay so much as one egg. They had plenty of places to lay too, so it wasn't that they lacked opportunity.

Females can also hold onto male sperm for prolonged periods of time, and people have purchased what they think are virgin females only to have them produce viable eggs months later. And they will also lay eggs that are infertile, if they don't have mates.

Like any animal, they're variable. At one point this summer, I had snails laying at least once a week. Now they have slowed down considerably, but they have not stopped. Just doing it less often. Won't surprise me if they take a break over winter, though I hope they will continue.

True! They are indeed variable as well like most specimen. But overhere in the past 15 years I've been breeding them, they've been sticking egg sacks very fast above the water surface. And most hatch within two weeks overhere.
 
That's interesting ! My very first clutches, from my first snails about 3 years ago, hatched very fast.. about two weeks. Then I had some that took a month. Reading online didn't tell me much, some sites said a month, some said less. In the summer months, I was getting new clutches almost every couple of days, sometimes three in one night, but they're certainly not laying that fast now. Even though their lighting has not changed, they are not far from a window so maybe the shorter days are affecting their reproduction.

The clutches I've had this year were hatching anywhere between 2-4 weeks, and lately, closer to the 2 week mark. I watch them to see if there is any sign of an egg rupturing or a bit of the egg case in the water, and if I see that, I'll remove the clutch from the glass and gently break it up in the water to let the rest of the little ones out.

Some of them have hatched entirely on their own, and all I find is the remains of the casing, but some seem to get, sort of stuck, I guess. I had a couple that never hatched and when I opened them to check on them, they had baby snails inside, dried out and dead. Since the glass top is always closed except for about a quarter inch ventilation gap, they aren't drying out where they are laid, so I'm not sure why that happened to them. So far, most clutches have produced baby snails, though I've yet to see one produce really large numbers of babies. Most have produced a couple of dozen or so, with one or two producing maybe 3 dozen or so.

I'd like to see more baby snails, because I can sell them easily. So I'll keep chugging along.
 
After a few days of the eggs being on the glass I remove them and put them in a plastic bowl lined with a few clean coffee filters and put some water in the bottom to keep the filter damp. Then i float it in the aquarium. This clutch that just hatched yielded about 50 babies. I have 2 other clutches that will begin hatching any day now, and a new clutch that was laid last night. The latest one is HUGE! I can't wait to see how many babies that one yields.

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I have tried that, and with just one exception, clutches I put into the container didn't fare well. The one that did was sort of an accident. It fell off and landed in a small cup that I'd been using for something else. I got distracted and forgot it was in there. Two days later I noticed the cup bottom had a pile of baby snails in it, with more crawling out of the egg case. Maybe two dozen of them. I tipped them out into the water.

The cup is just tall enough it hits the glass when floating, so it stays quite humid inside it. Should have some water though, in case I don't find new hatchlings right away. That first one was just a fluke, me finding them right after they hatched. I might try it on purpose to see how it goes with another clutch though.

Good luck with the big clutch you have.. So far most of mine have been relatively small, less than one inch long. I have a couple that are about 1.5 or 1.45 inches long that are new.. hope they yield more. Never seen a really big clutch yet from this batch of snails but maybe they are still relatively young. Perhaps clutches will get larger with age.. be interesting to see if that's the case.
 
DjMasterpiece, your inbox is full again. The snails are ready to ship.

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