Natural Snail control in my Shrimp tanks

There was a lot of movement from my snails this morning and I watched as they seemed to mate.

Ahelenamate.jpg


Hopefully there will be some young soon, there is more on these guys at my blog

I am really fascinated by these snails and they are like none I have ever kept before....
 
I now have egg clutches in the tank, each seems to hold 2 to 4 small eggs in a pillow shaped gel pack affair about 1mm in size.

Anentomehelenaegg1.jpg


Also the question of how and if they can control a snail population in ones tank is looking like a yes as the size the adults prefer are disappearing rapidly leaving the smaller and baby snails for the soon to hatch young....

Just a darn cool snail in my book!
 
Now this is interesting...What appeared to be several small eggs in the sack is now one large one?????

The egg sack holding what appeared to be more than one egg yesterday now looks like this...

Ahelenaegg2.jpg


As you can see it now appears to hold only one large egg... If you look at yesterdays post it appears to hold several smaller eggs.

Ahelenaegg1.jpg


I would love to hear comments from someone more educated in snail egg development on this change. The other egg sacks have undergone the same change and hold one egg. Were these fresh laid yesterday and the embryos not fully developed? I am guessing this to be the case.

More to come....

Bill
 
Hmm, very interesting. My gang has been mating quite often as well, though I haven't spotted any egg sacs lately. I'm wondering if they can be safely moved. If they're laid on the substrate that's not an issue, but if they're laid on the walls, can they be scraped off and put in a breeder net? It would be much easier to keep track of the little ones that way. I suppose we'll see. If mine lay, I'll post up some photos.

Thanks for the updates, Bill. Great photos!
 
After finding one baby A. helena in the tank yesterday, I took a minute to look around and found over 40 egg sacs in the plants! I guess it had been a while since I really looked. :)
So they're breeding quite quickly in my 18 gallon, and I'm finding lots of empty shells. The pond snail population is noticeably smaller. Hooray!
I'll post photos soon.
 
Don't I feel out? Everyone with these snails are having eggs, and I've got nothing. Sometimes I wonder if mine are all one gender.
 
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