20 Gallon Tank Journal! Mystery Snails, Molly fry, and RCS

I have one tank, and 20long that has about 30 Red Cherry Shrimp and 2 mystery snails. I took the mystery snails out of the water and attempted to sex them yesterday and believe I was successful. If I am correct, my gold snail is a female and my blue snail is a male, yay! I actually caught them mating earlier today as well which is what inspired me to keep track of it here on the forum.

I'm also hoping to begin a colony of RCS in this tank, and I believe I'm well on my way! I tested my water parameters yesterday and I was at 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, <20 nitrate, pH of 7.2, and the water is very hard (that's the nature of the water in my area). I received the shrimp from the forum's own EricV on Wednesday, and bought the snails on Thursday. The female shrimp are not yet berried, but they're still juveniles and I just got them two days ago so that's alright!

As for the molly fry I promised in the title, I work at a Pet Store and today I noticed that there were 3 little molly fry swimming around in the tank with balloon mollies and a few sailfin mollies. I netted them up, and with the permission of my manager, brought them home to raise and return to the store once they are a safe size. I thought it would be fun to raise them, and they'd just get eaten at the store, so why not?

I have the molly fry in a breeder net and my water level lowered. Hopefully I'll get some mystery snail eggs soon! And would anybody be interested in some baby mystery snails if I am successful in breeding them? I can sell some to the store I work at and a couple of other Local fish stores but I want you guys to have first dibs!

Hooray for baby aquatic creatures! Sorry, I couldn't figure out the attaching the photos to this post itself, so I just did what I knew how to do, lol.

EDIT: So apparently I did attach a couple of the pictures, but there are more on the album, so be sure to look there too!!!

 

Invert only 20 gallon? I'm jealous! Those mystery snails look real pretty, I used to have some that had a "litter" for a lack of a better term. All I did to aid them was lower the water level. Best of luck!

 

Thank you! And yes, I've been wanting to have a primarily invert tank for a loooooong time but never did it until now! I don't have any other tanks, and I'm VERY excited for this one! I might be adding some corydoras catfish eventually as well, mostly because they're so freaking adorable!

 

Corys are one of my favorite fish, they always seem to find a way into my tanks!

 

Good luck with the mystery snail breeding. My female one was gold and male was Blue too. I ended up with all gold the first few batches of snails and then on another batch, I had 2 surviving blue snails, the rest gold.

They really are fun to watch ( and raise )

 

Beautiful tank!

 

So far no eggs but some of the shrimp are saddled and the mollies are getting bigger every day!

 

Them snails look so cool! I love reading about other peoples tanks, it's really interesting an exciting!

 

I have a 36 gallon tank with about 13-14 magenta mystery snails (1 adult and the rest pretty small little ones...none bigger than a dime and some small as a bb), an albino BN pleco, a single guppy that I can't part with and seems very healthy xD and a large amount of ramshorns thanks to some eggs surviving a plant dip :/ I love my (almost) scaleless tank Good luck with the breeding. I can't wait until my magenta's are old enough to breed. My blue is HUGE already since he was quite large when I got him but he's doubled in size and is the hulk of my tank

 

From experience corydoras (almost any fish except ottos actually) will eat shrimp. Most fish will pounce on baby shrimp but if they figure out adults are fair game they eat all or part of them. I had a big colony in my 4-foot community that ran well for a while and then became dinner. If you want to keep the RCS you'll either need an epic amount of plants or considering holding off on corys :/

 

UPDATE: Stiiiiill nothing! The shrimp don't seem to be berried, just saddled, and there still are no mystery eggs. The mollies are getting bigger though and I'll post a picture of them soon. I added some MTS today because I think they'd do more good than bad in my tank, and they're supposed to stay well hidden.

From experience corydoras (almost any fish except ottos actually) will eat shrimp. Most fish will pounce on baby shrimp but if they figure out adults are fair game they eat all or part of them. I had a big colony in my 4-foot community that ran well for a while and then became dinner. If you want to keep the RCS you'll either need an epic amount of plants or considering holding off on corys :/

Really? I've always heard that the smaller species of corys at least usually stay away from the shrimp. I was so hoping to have them.

Them snails look so cool! I love reading about other peoples tanks, it's really interesting an exciting!

Me too! I loooove breeding journals so I thought I'd contribute.

I have a 36 gallon tank with about 13-14 magenta mystery snails (1 adult and the rest pretty small little ones...none bigger than a dime and some small as a bb), an albino BN pleco, a single guppy that I can't part with and seems very healthy xD and a large amount of ramshorns thanks to some eggs surviving a plant dip :/ I love my (almost) scaleless tank Good luck with the breeding. I can't wait until my magenta's are old enough to breed. My blue is HUGE already since he was quite large when I got him but he's doubled in size and is the hulk of my tank

Awesome!!! I love tanks like that!

 

UPDATE: So I took some pictures of the baby mollies as promised! I'm beginning to think that they might be balloon mollies. They came from a tank with balloon and sail fin mollies so either are possible. I also got a cool picture of my shrimp underneath the net trying to eat food that had fallen to the bottom!

But wait--there's some more excitement! Today at work, a black lyre tail molly had babies! So now I have fresh babies to tend to! I bought some frozen baby brine shrimp to feed them as well so maybe they'll grow a bit quicker! I also ordered another sponge filter to put on a small 5 gallon tank I have that I'm going to move the babies to once I have it set up. They're not going to fit in that net forever!

I also added some driftwood to my tank today and I love it!

 

UPDATE: We have eggs! My momma snail finally decided to lay a small clutch of eggs in my tank! I waited 24 hours from when I first saw them to remove them from the glass and now they're in a homemade incubator floating in my tank for warmth. I also raised the temp in my tank by a couple of degrees.

 

Awesome!

 

Lots of excitement!

UPDATE: Yesterday, I noticed that one of my RCS is finally berried! There are eggs on at least on RCS. Today, my purple Mystery snails came in and my current mystery snail egg clutch finally hatched! With my betta in the breeding net I was a bit apprehensive of putting the new snails and babies in there, but I did anyways because I didn't have much other choice. He seemed interested but didn't attack anything so hopefully it'll stay that way! I picked up the egg clutch today and it broke in half. Whats I've read says that that means they're ready, so I broke it up the rest of the way and voila, babies! I'm so excited for these guys, you couldn't believe it!





EDIT: I just realized that it took my eggs less than 2 weeks to be ready to hatch! That's crazy! I've only ever seen 2 weeks and up, usually 3 or 4 weeks!