Sexing mystery snails

[kimmisc]

Is there any other way to determine gender besides the penile sheath? I tried examining mine , but everytime I pick one up, it goes into it's shell and shuts the door. I don't know how to get it to stay out of the shell like in the pictures I saw on applesnail.net.

 

[Becca3711]

Try gently VERY gently blowing a stream of air w/your mouth at the fleshy part if any of the foot sticks out when it goes into it's shell. For some reason when I blow air on mine, they come out. Then it's easy.

 

[pixl8r]

You can also take clues form the shape and color of the snail's shell.

http://www.applesnail.net/content/anatomy/reproduction.php

The male's shell flares out around the rim, like a tuba. The shell of a female continues in the same arc, without the flare. If the snail has a light colored shell, you can see the dark ovaries of the female snail where the shell tightly spirals (at the point).

Or you do the lazy way. Just wait until you see two mating and then you know which is male.

 

[kimmisc]

The trumpet shape of the shell opening is for P.flagellatta. It doesn't say this is the case for brigs. Would be nice though. I am not looking to breed them. I am making sure not to put 2 sexes in the same tank because I don't want to have to search behind the rims of my tanks for clutches everytime I do PWC's. I don't know anything about shipping snails, nor do I have permits for shipping them, so I definately don't want 200-600 potentially golfball sized snails to deal with. I've killed enough snails lately getting rid of ramshorns. hehe No more deaths around here for a while.

 

[kimmisc]

Try gently VERY gently blowing a stream of air w/your mouth at the fleshy part if any of the foot sticks out when it goes into it's shell. For some reason when I blow air on mine, they come out. Then it's easy.

Either I have all females, or I don't recognize a snail penis when I see it. They did eventually come out of their shells. Thanks for the tip.

Oh, do the snails have to be a certain size before their sex organs are visible? The largest one I have is about nickle size. Smallest is about the size of a pencil eraser.

 

[kimmisc]

It was actually http://www.tronchaser.com/~cindi/ss.html I was referencing earlier, not applesnail.net. The penis sheath is very subtle when you don't know what you're looking at. It all looks like a bunch of ... errr, snot to be honest. They're much prettier IN the water. I think maybe it'll be easier when they're older and big enough to reproduce.