why breed snails?

C

CerenaDaft

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Oct 17, 2011
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i am obsessed with anything involving a tank and water. i dream about fish. (true story)
I want to try my hand at breeding snails, but i don't know what i would do with snail babies. I want to have a plan before i go and buy a few snails and have babies everywhere. :help:
can you use them for food for an oscar? my brother has one
are they easy(ish) to sell on the internet?
are they easy to ship?
etc.
 
i would say, before you start breeding anything (fish or snails), that you have somewhere for the offspring if you don't plan on keeping them all. that's step #1.

then decide which species of snail you want to breed. the 'pest' snails like ramshorns, malaysian trumpet snails, etc are worth absolutely nothing unless you know a lot of loach or puffer people - these fish eat the snails.

apple/mystery snails are prettier, bigger, fairly easy to breed, and have a bit of a 'sell value'. read up at www.applesnail.net for info on them. they are the pomacea diffusa. you need a male and a female, as they are not hermaphrodites like some other snails.

mom and pop type aquarium stores will be your best bet for selling/trading in snail babies. back when i was breeding apple snails, i would take the babies in to my favourite store and trade them for a bit of store credit. it didn't add up to much, maybe 5 bucks at most if the batch of babies was large. the baby snails would have to be pea size at the minimum, and most stores would want them a bit bigger than that. uncommon colours will sell better than your average golden apple snail. my snails were gold, ivory, blue, and jade.
 
You could do nerites, they sell for a decent amount, but they require brackish water for the eggs to hatch. They will breed in fresh water, and lay eggs, but the eggs wont hatch in fresh water. Clithion corona nerites sell for about 2.50 each, not bad with how many eggs they lay. More work IMO, but I <3 all of mine. Never did have luck with apple snails. I dont think even when I had 5 in my 20 gal did I get one of each gender. Never even mated or laid eggs.
 
CerenaDaft said:
If I did breed nerites could I just keep them in water with enough salt for the parents to stay in the tank?
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Hatched nerites can be acclimated to full salt, brackish or full fresh. They really don't seem to care much about salt content after hatching. The eggs will only hatch in brackish.

At this point, you'll be better served, and get more information you can easily refer to, by googling nerites. I know a lot of the people on this forum have good information, but they shouldn't be your *only* source of information, as not everyone really knows everything or is always readily available to answer the questions. You can even google things like whether oscars will eat snails, and in most cases, get a quicker answer than by posting and waiting for a response. I generally come here for ideas, not facts that can be googled, as well as anecdotal experience, because sometimes experience shows that things that aren't "factual" can happen. An example is that it is said that angel fish, being cichlids, will eat anything small enough to fit in their mouths (true of most fish, it seems), but many have the experience that if the angels are young and the last fish into the tank, they don't eat the smaller inhabitants.
 
authmal said:
Hatched nerites can be acclimated to full salt, brackish or full fresh. They really don't seem to care much about salt content after hatching. The eggs will only hatch in brackish.

At this point, you'll be better served, and get more information you can easily refer to, by googling nerites. I know a lot of the people on this forum have good information, but they shouldn't be your *only* source of information, as not everyone really knows everything or is always readily available to answer the questions. You can even google things like whether oscars will eat snails, and in most cases, get a quicker answer than by posting and waiting for a response. I generally come here for ideas, not facts that can be googled, as well as anecdotal experience, because sometimes experience shows that things that aren't "factual" can happen. An example is that it is said that angel fish, being cichlids, will eat anything small enough to fit in their mouths (true of most fish, it seems), but many have the experience that if the angels are young and the last fish into the tank, they don't eat the smaller inhabitants.
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Actually, Nerite eggs often hatch in full fresh water...it's the baby snails that need brackish water to survive.

To the OP..if you are just getting into snail breeding, personally I would try some apple snails as BettaFishMommy suggested. They are fun to watch, fun to breed, and relatively easy for a first timer...plus a lot of people collect/buy them, so there is a market for the babies.
 
If you really want to breed pond snails, I would recommend a dwarf puffer. You could safely house one in a 5g as they only get 1.5". These little puffers LOVE to eat snails.
 
Oscars for one, can and do eat many types of snails with the exception of the Malaysian trumpet snail - the shell is too hard for them. Malaysian trumpet snails (MTS) are parthenogenetic and the only thing they need is clean water. They are a bonus to have in tanks with sand substrate as they keep it stirred up. They do the same in gravel tanks but the need or use of them isn't as rewarding.

Mystery snails are neat and you can breed particular colors if you work at it. They often sell well but you will have more than you can sell at times. Other times you will never have enough - feast or famine!

For a novice, breeding fancy guppies is a good start. You need 1 male and 2 females; by about 6 months you should have around 100, if not more. Many pet store will take them and they also can be used as feeders for larger fish. When breeding them you need a critical eye and only keep the absolute best. Cull the rest.

Convicts need 1 male, 1 female and 20 gallons of water and you will have 300 in no time. Getting rid of the fry is difficult and are often culled as feeders. Pink convicts are far worse as they are very aggressive. I do not recommend that you breed either one.
 
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