SNAILS SNAILS!!! how to tell poo from eggs, and breed them!

aquatic-Bizkut

aquatic-Bizkut

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Jul 22, 2005
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well i am breeding snails and have been for a month or so, they are to feed my dwarf puffers, i have 5 large snails in a little cooler, with some lettuce, no heater, no filter, no gravel..... just plain de-chlorinated water and sunlight....

i have not been able to tell eggs from poop, as i imagine they look the same, i have heard that the eggs will stick to the side in a white sack, but i need a visual and a picture of the difference..... as they require weekly water changes, how does this work withought getting the eggs dumped out???? please help and provide some info... thanks!

-JR
 
Snails eggs of the common ramshorn and common pond snails are very firmly attached to the tank walls/rocks/plants/etc in clear to amber gels. It is not possible to confuse them with poop once you have seen them and ID'd them correctly, but they can be difficult to see looking from the surface down - try sighting along the walls looking for flatish lumps. When you can see through them in glass tanks, you can see the developing embryos.

MTS do not have external eggs, they release live young.

Do you know what kind of snails you have?
 
yes i have 5 mystery snails, they are pretty cool and i have seen one the size of a fist..!!!! yeah i have 5 in a small cooler, but plan on moving them to a 5 gallon little glass tank, and also putting something dark in there so they are attracted to breed there (that is what i have heard)
 
i've read that mystery snails leave the gel packets on the walls or sometimes on the underside of plant leaves. mine have never laid eggs, though. they might be two males.

the ramshorns will also leave eggs on the walls, but they're a lot bigger. also, when i overfeed them (lots of zucchini and a few bunches of plants thrown in to float on top) they will lay the eggs as they wander around eating the plants, and leave a "string of pearls" winding all over the plants. i don't know if it is the fresh leaves that makes them breed or the cover provided by the floating plants, but they only do it when there are plants floating at the top. my mystery snails don't get fed the same way b/c i don't want to cloud up the water for my other fish, and they don't eat the live plants, so i'm not sure if that would work for you. also, the ramshorns are hermaphrodites while the mystery snails have separate sexes.

the poop looks like little brown pellets or tiny grass seeds in a clump. most of the time it is in a string instead of a pile.
 
Mystery snails deposit eggs at and above the waterline, an really are not suited to snail production for puffers. They are too large, too slow to breed, too demanding on space and food, too heavy a bioload, and mostly because they get too big to fast - if you have massive water volumes to raise them. Get common pond snails or common ramshorns (not Colombian ramshorns, which are flat-spiraled Apple snails). You are working with wrong snails.
 
Why would you choose apple snails?? Talk about making an EXTREMELY easy task wayyyy harder. lol. Ramshorns and common pond snails will breed like CRAZY. Just give them plenty of foood. Buy some live plants from a petshop, they will come with ramshorn and common pond snail eggs. Or look for them at your pet store in tanks with plants. They are tiny.
 
ahhhhhh **** well can i get some apple snails, that wont work, or will it......does anyone have a link where i can buy some snails??? i will try ebay....

thanks for your help, the snails will soon be replaced....
 
people are always selling ramshorns on aquabid.com. I'll send u a bunch. I have small ones and a few big full adult sized rams horns. They start breeding when still small.
 
oh and wait, the mystery snails also have stripes, is this right, plus they are A-sexual???
 
mystery snails are either male or female, ramshorns are hermaphrodites. they can swap sperm and both will lay eggs, and they can store sperm (i think) from previous matings.

i wasn't sure what you were asking in your other thread, now i understand. if your lfs told you that snails were asexual, kick them in the shins.
 
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