I need some snails, but what kind?

Jag1980

Jag1980

Got Plants?
Aug 18, 2008
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Marysville, Wa
I want to breed some snails for fun and profit.
What is a attractive small snail that has a high sale value and reproduces well?
Many options to chose from would be great :)

Something that doesn't eat plants would be best.
 
Assassins. They grow a little slowly, but there aren't a lot on the market yet.

Trapdoors are nice too.
 
I here its hard to breed nerites though. Then again some people have tremendous look with them.
 
biomajorstudent said:
Nerites! Nerites eat tons of algae, and come in lots of colors. They are also somewhat unusual. There are even kinds that have little projections on their shells!! You can buy them from msjinkzd right now.
Click to expand...

They're also very very hard to breed in captiviy, won't breed at all in freshwater.
 
paperdragon said:
They're also very very hard to breed in captiviy, won't breed at all in freshwater.
Click to expand...
Yeah... I guess that's true... Well, if they want a bit of a challenge and have a salty tank. My other suggestion would be brig apple snails. Looooots of fun colors. You gotta have males and females to reproduce, so you wont be overwhelmed.
 
I can't think of any small snails that are easy to breed that will sell for a real profit. Assassins are the best bet, but they take a long time to grow out.
 
I'm not really sure you can do any animal for profit, unless you're a big chain store like Petco or Walmart. Even they hardly make a profit off their animals. Breeding and raising animals is really more of a passion thing, less of a profit thing. My lfs is done by one guy and his family, and is only open on weekends. He does it for fun, and says he never really makes a profit.
If you have a store nearby that will buy the snails from you, you might make a little money... but when you take into account food, tank cleaning, time, effort... its really more about having fun.
I say, just pick a pretty snail and have fun with it! :)
I am a newb, so I don't have much fish experience. This is stuff that has been told to me by people in the biz, so I could be wrong.
 
Keeping the type of snails you do because you really like them, letting them reproduce on their own, and then selling off the babies as a natural progression seems the best way of doing this. You get to enjoy what you really love. The sales that come later still won't make a profit when you balance sales against expenses, but it will help to offset your costs for keeping them. So it's still a worthwhile effort. On the other hand, choosing a snail from the beginning based on it's sale potential and breeding them for money is going about this the wrong way and (most likely) for the wrong reasons - particularly when you find out your returns aren't what you hoped they would be.
 
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