Jendayi

I bought a 'mystery snail' about a month ago at my LFS to put in my cycled 5 gallon tank. This is the future home of one betta fish who is currently recovering from fin rot in a hospital tank. I identified my snail as an Apple Snail (her name is Fuji lol).

She must have come to me in a 'family way' because she has been laying eggs under the hood of the tank. I didn't realize she was doing this until a week or so after I got her and found three sets of eggs up there when I was doing a water change. They looked dried out - the light is right where she layed them. I scraped them off and flushed them. I check for them daily now, but apparently some have hatched because today I found three of the tiniest snails on the walls of the tank. I know it has to be from her because all my tank decorations are silk, no live plants.

I read that apple snails need a male and female to reproduce, so I'm wondering how long she will continue to lay eggs? The little snails aren't hurting anything and I don't really want to kill them. I was thinking that when they get bigger I would just take them back to the LFS. Does anyone know how old they have to be before the little ones start reproducing? I don't want them to get out of control either.

Thanks!

griffin

hehe, it doesn't take long! instead of flushing the eggs (if you don't want them) is to just take them off and drop them in the water. they won't hatch if submerged, and have plenty of good nutrients for the snail to eat. however, watch the eggs to make sure they aren't going bad. some snails will eat them, and some won't

i think usually around a half inch to an inch or so is large enough. (or that's the smallest that i remember mine laying eggs)

as for the one that's laying eggs, it could be several months as they can store sperm for i think it is up to 9 or 10 months. i think mine were laying eggs for about 6 or so (?) months after they had been separated.

what color were the eggs?

Jendayi

Oh I just noticed there is a Snail child board here. If a mod happens to see this, would you please move to the appropriate board? Apologies...

Thanks for the quick reply! Her eggs were an off-white color, leaning towards somewhat tan. I didn't pay close attention to them other than to go Oh Great... Here is a pic I found online, and it is exactly what her eggs looked like, tho:



And here is a pic of Fuji:

Jendayi

Well she layed a batch last night, so I had a chance to get a pic of her own eggs. There seemed to be a little less than the last few batches, but I can't say for sure. Anyway, here they are:

griffin

cool - you'll notice the eggs start to decrease in number over time as well.

i was asking about the egg color to see what kind of apple snails they were. more of a curiousity question on my part :P i think you have brigs (the kind that is far better imo )

Jendayi

I started moving the baby snails out into their own cup. So far I have found 9, but I'm sure there are more. I plan on putting my betta back into that tank some time this week and I don't want him to get involved with snails lol

Is there anything special I should do for the babies? I put a small piece of algae wafer in with them, and I plan on changing out their water every day or so with tank water. Anything else?

griffin

not really, pretty same as the adults. feed them (algae wafers are fine), make sure there's lots of Ca in the water, i don't think they're too much different in actual care aside from making massive amounts of waste as adults from fish.

if you don't want to keep the babies, you could put the betta in there, and it'll probably eat the snails. i'm not sure if you wanted to keep them or not though.