Snail Eggs GALORE!!

[JoeRags3]

I recently purchased 3 Anubias Nana plants for a tank I'm setting up and had a free hitch-hiking ramshorn snail (about this size - O). Today I was inspecting the plants and noticed a bunch of gel sacs, 12 between the 3 plants, with eggs on the underside of the leaves. The plants are all in water in tuberware for QT and wanted to know will the eggs drown if kept like that. And how long would it take to hatch?

Here a a few picture I snapped.
http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/6461/img0326lx8.th.jpg (http://img110.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img0326lx8.jpg) http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/9480/img0328kl1.th.jpg (http://img114.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img0328kl1.jpg) http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/2553/img033be8.th.jpg (http://img72.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img033be8.jpg) http://img335.imageshack.us/img335/5536/img0333tf3.th.jpg (http://img335.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img0333tf3.jpg)

[fishcatch22]

i'm not sure how long, but I do know that RH eggs are aquatic, and that you should leave them in water.

[apratsunrthd]

I must be the only one here who HATES snails... if it were my tank, I'd throw an M-80 in it and call it a loss.

[fishcatch22]

RH snails are good snails. they're not the kind that can overrun your tank.

[Mgamer20o0]

apratsunrthd i dont know about that. water all over the florr. dead fish. dosent sound smart to me.

[JoeRags3]

Is it possible to carefully scrape off the sacs and place them in a margarine container until they all hatch?

[fishcatch22]

no, don't mess with them. just leave them as they are.

[hondamx]

Ya just leave them alone.

[tmtpowers]

If you are wanting to place the eggs in a incubator to prevent them from being sucked up or eaten by other fish, I would take the entire plant and put it into a different tank, HOWEVER, I have no experience with rams or other snails that lay aquatic eggs so you may want to research that more. See if you can find a ram snail breeder and get advice.

BTW, Fishcatch and hondamx, if you guys are ram breeders, forgive my post. As I said, I've not dealt with this kind of snail but know that breeders usually have the answer :)

[plah831]

i agree with tmt. take the entire plant, or leaf, instead of trying to remove just the egg jellies. i breed ramshorns as feeders, and their eggs are very small and delicate, quite unlike mysteries or the other large snails.

if you move the eggs to a tank with a heater, that will help them develop faster! then, once they hatch, the dead leaf will become food. however, i've done this before and had leaves (Amazon sword) stay alive for weeks. oh, well, they like to crawl on them. snails do great with some old flakes or bottom feeder wafers (algae thins, whatever).

[tmtpowers]

i agree with tmt. take the entire plant, or leaf, instead of trying to remove just the egg jellies. i breed ramshorns as feeders, and their eggs are very small and delicate, quite unlike mysteries or the other large snails.

if you move the eggs to a tank with a heater, that will help them develop faster! then, once they hatch, the dead leaf will become food. however, i've done this before and had leaves (Amazon sword) stay alive for weeks. oh, well, they like to crawl on them. snails do great with some old flakes or bottom feeder wafers (algae thins, whatever).

LOL I knew we had a rams breeder on here but I just couldn't remember who it was to save my life :P Thanks for stepping in :)

[plah831]

haha. I'm sure breeding snails as feeders versus to sell as pets is very different, though!

However, many of my snails are quite pretty and they're all quite robust (naturally hard water, no shell problems). In fact, there are a few empty shells, picked up from the LFS with the original set of parents, I left in there to see if they would erode. Nope, they're hard as rock after over a month! I can't even break their shells between my fingers if I tried! I guess I might be able to with the tiny snails, but I wouldn't want to do that since I'm working so hard for the small ones (feeding dwarf puffers).

[tmtpowers]

LOL Want to trade water? I have to fight tooth and nail to keep my pH, hardness, and alkalinity up! I had to change my substrate to all araganite sand in hopes to get everything up and kept up. Really, I probably have it a bit easier than you :P Tonight I had two clutches hatching pretty well so what I do to help things out a bit and keep the nasty gunk that comes out of the clutch out of my water is place the clutch and babies that haven't went into the water yet into a net and run water over it to dissolve the clutch and be left with only babies. 2 minutes of work and I would say I have approx 400 babies from just those two clutches. LOL With those tiny rams, I doubt it would be that easy :P

Anyways, sorry for hijacking this thread :)

[plah831]

LOL Want to trade water?
HA! Maybe I could bottle it and sell it at LFS as "Snail Tonic" or "Snail-Growing Medium" and sell it for $5 a gallon!

yes, sorry for hijacking your thread.

[Chickieepooh2u]

I had a fit over a hitch hiker snail too. Until I saw what it did to the algae in my tank. Now I'm a huge fan of them. Got bunches of them in every tank. The tanks have never looked better. lol My guppies seem to think the little newly hatched ones are tasty too. :)

[plah831]

I had a fit over a hitch hiker snail too. Until I saw what it did to the algae in my tank. Now I'm a huge fan of them.
Agreed! I can't understand people who try so hard to exterminate snails (even to the point of using chemicals, or just violently smashing them). They're really not offensive or harmful in any way.

as a "test", I have a divided 10 gal with snails on one side, and a betta on the other (he kills any snails that are on his side). and the side with snails is sparkling clean, while the side with the betta has unsightly algae.

[fishcatch22]

Agreed! I can't understand people who try so hard to exterminate snails (even to the point of using chemicals, or just violently smashing them). They're really not offensive or harmful in any way.

as a "test", I have a divided 10 gal with snails on one side, and a betta on the other (he kills any snails that are on his side). and the side with snails is sparkling clean, while the side with the betta has unsightly algae.yeah, HH snails are the only algae eating creatures I have ever had that actually eat algae in great proportions.

[plah831]

What's HH ?

[JoeRags3]

There is one plant that has majority of the snail eggs, and plan on putting it in my vivarium where I have a lot of algae, it will be my first aquatic plant in there and there will be a lesser chance of anything eating the hatchlings. And there is plenty of algae for them to munch on, then I'll tranfer some to my 38 Gallon. Whatever is left over I'll divy out between friends then here on AC.

[JoeRags3]

Well today I found the first evidence that the snails eggs clusters hatched and are werent eaten my anything in my vivarium. And yes they are definately Rams Horn snails. I dont have a picture cause I couldnt really focus in on something so small with my digital camera. I'm not sure howmany there might be but I know there is AT LEAST one.

[tmtpowers]

Congrats :)

[JoeRags3]

I was able to snap a couple pics of two of my "newborns". They sure do grow quick!
http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/7119/picture040gh3.th.jpg (http://img504.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture040gh3.jpg)http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/7636/picture028lz2.th.jpg (http://img504.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture028lz2.jpg)http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/361/picture027jo8.th.jpg (http://img504.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture027jo8.jpg)http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/6767/picture022yn0.th.jpg (http://img400.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture022yn0.jpg)

[pugwash]

What's HH ?

Think it's a typo for RH - RamsHorn

[epicfish]

Yummmm, escargot. =P

Are RH good feeders for dwarf puffers? I know MTS have shells that are too hard for the puffers, but how about RH or pond snails? Which ones are easiest to breed as food?

Sorry for threadjacking, but it seems like you've got new snails already! =)