Mystery Snail Clutch Journal

*Background- I've had a wild colored mystery snail for a while, who's male, and I decided to go try and find him a lady friend, lol. So, she's the classic gold Inca snail, and I did see them mate a few times, but since the females can store sperm I'm not sure that the male I have is 100% the father. She laid a clutch a few days after I got her, sadly the laid them in the water and some of the eggs were only half eggs. I did try and incubate some of them, but they had all drowned. I got ready to wait two more weeks for another clutch, but the very next day, she laid some properly. My water level was about 2-2 1/2 inches lower at that point. Ten days later, she laid another clutch, and yet another four days later. Ladies and genltemen, that is four clutches in 15 days.
I'm going to make this journal just to see what the babies grow up to look like, and to see if there are different genetics between clutches. Also, I can try and answer questions if need be.
The first clutch I removed from the glass because I have had little moisture since my bubbler broke, but I still have a lid. I put in in a Ziploc sandwich container. I put it on a paper towel on the lid, which I drilled large holes into, and I drilled tiny holes into the bottom for airflow. I drilled a hole and got a suction cup to attach to the side. I then placed the bottom of another sandwich container on the top as a lid to trap moisture.
The first clutch began to hatch two days ago, with a whole two babies emerging. Yesterday, two more came out. This morning two more, but this afternoon, 27 were in the bottom water part, 42 on top on the lid, 7-8 on the underside of the lid, and about 30-40 still in/on the eggs.
Bascially, once they hatch they began to search for water and went through the holes in the lid to the bottom holding part.
Pictures:
1 and 2 are the first failed clutch
Picture 3 is the second clutch right after it was laid
4 is the clutch after I took it off the side.... some of the eggs closed back up some didn't
5 the clutch a few days later
6 the clutch the day before the first hatch
7 day before the first hatch!

 

Double post because I want more pics! Lol.
1: the first baby!
2: size comparison with Mom (I was trying to show it to someone else who thought the snail was dead because of the white part, that's why I labeled it "tail"
3: you can see the third baby, so far they are all tan/yellow with black speckles and white bodies
4: the babies this morning, the clutch was like this since yesterday but they didn't really move
5: the 27 in the holding tank
6: the 42
7: the container after I helped get most of the 42 into it.
8: the presumed happy couple, lol
9: the other two clutches, I placed a damp paper towel under one, just to see if it helps, that one is about a week old now, but was four days I think at the time of the pic. The other was brand new, not even a day old.

 

Cool! I can't wait to see the colour variations.

 

Me too! I know the female was kept only with other golds and a few ivorys before, so I guess those may be a possibility too... at least for the first clutch or so....

 

I love mystery snails so much. I plan on getting a couple for my 40g.

 

Me too, they're so cute and personable! I never expected a snail to have so much personality. I plan on keeping a handful since my 60 is pretty understocked, but after that I'll probably be selling/giving away some on here *wink wink*

 

Are you in the US?

 

Dang, I am and I see you're not... sorry
Edit: this is going to be a really weird, potentially offensive, and unrelated question, but I have some friends from England and they kept pet Silkie chickens in their houses and litter box trained them and everything, is that common?

 

Oh well, too bad I would have loved to have some.

I've never heard of someone keeping chickens indoors. There are quite a few people who have chickens in their garden/yard but not in the house. I'm impressed they could get them litter box trained!

 

Haha yeah it was crazy, especially because it was a couple different people, just wondering if it was more common in the UK. Sorry I'm too far away to ship...
Anyway, turns out that I seriously underestimated the 30-40 left in the eggs because I just moved 61 from the lid to the holding part and there are still some left!

 

Here's a picture of some of them from this morning. A few more came out from the egg clutch, but the clutch is basically non-existent now so I think this is it. A few of them are nibbling on some kale I put in last night, but most show no interest. I'm going to try feeding some micropellets and crushed goldfish pellets and see how they react to that. I'll leave them in the tiny Ziploc breeder box thing I made for a few days, then move them to a larger one. I'm going to keep them in the tank as they seem unable to climb out the holes and it'll be much easier to keep the parameters good in the big tank

 

Very cute! Keep us updated about the colours!

 

Looks like the second successfully laid clutch will hatch today!
Some of the babies are taking on a stronger gold coloration than others, some of them seem to be darkening, but I think it's just too early to tell.... I'm so curious to how they'll turn out. They've about doubled in size, and their appeties have grown massively. They kind of look like tiny helmets, lol

 

Well, it definitely hatched, and I have a bunch more babies. The older ones are more than twice as large, and the first two curls of their shells are yellow, the rest seems to be brown. Also, their bodies appear more grey/white

 

Some of them look purple in the picture (right hand side).

 

Huh, so they do. Still a waiting game, lol.

 

It's hard to tell, but the larger ones are looking pretty green. The other egg clutch looks like it hatch tommorow or the next day... I'm surprised the female hasn't laid more eggs, considering the time frame for the first four clutches. Also I moved all the babies from the first two clutches into one larger Tupperware I drilled.

 

It's been a month for 1 of mine and still nothing. They were mating so I don't no what I am doing wrong, congrats on you babies

 

It's been a month for 1 of mine and still nothing. They were mating so I don't no what I am doing wrong, congrats on you babies

Dang, I'm sorry you're not having much luck. Have you dropped your water level at least 2 inches? Also, mine seemed to lay clutches the day after I dropped a ton of food in, doesn't have to be quality food, but I dropped in several goldfish pellets... My female snail ate in just a few hours the amount of food my goldfish eats in a day

 

I have clutches but I can't seem to get them to hatch. I had 4 but yesterday one was bad so I disposed of it, now I have 3 and although I can tell there is snails in them, seem like they aren't ever going to hatch. I did same as you for incubation. Idk what s going on with it

 

I hope you have better luck in the future, I'll PM you and try and figure out what's going on.

 

Looks like every single one is brown...
There are some that are pretty much pea sized already, and she laid another clutch, but I think I'll just let this one hatch out in the water. I only used my incubator thing for the first one, the other two I just taped the bottom part of it under the egg clutches and the babies just fell/crawled in.

 

There is a small gene code that plays into colors for Mystery Snail breeding and when a Wild type breeds with any type the babies always come out Wild. Dark foots are dominant.
How moist is the sides of your tank? I'm trying to hatch a clutch right now and I was wondering if maybe it was getting too much water.

 

Has anyone mapped out the genetics Goldie&Yami? It would be an interesting read.

 

Has anyone mapped out the genetics Goldie&Yami? It would be an interesting read.

Yeah there were a couple of people who came pretty close, let me see if I can find some links...
Baby Mystery Snail Colors
If you scroll down a bit, Pringlethesnail made a chart that seems to be true to everything else I've read.

There is a small gene code that plays into colors for Mystery Snail breeding and when a Wild type breeds with any type the babies always come out Wild. Dark foots are dominant.
How moist is the sides of your tank? I'm trying to hatch a clutch right now and I was wondering if maybe it was getting too much water.

There's always a chance of a recessive gene coming into play. If the wild color had say a recessive gold gene, some of the babies would be Jade. It looks like a fine amount of water to me. Mine was a lot less, so I would wet it twice a day, but the tops and bottoms still dried out. I hope you have some luck with yours!

 

all this time, I just threw mine away yesterday. so have have 2 new ones. 1 is incubated (which I don't have high hopes for because I incubated the others to no avail) and 1 where mom laid it in my tank. so we will c

 

Yeah there were a couple of people who came pretty close, let me see if I can find some links...
Baby Mystery Snail Colors
If you scroll down a bit, Pringlethesnail made a chart that seems to be true to everything else I've read.

There's always a chance of a recessive gene coming into play. If the wild color had say a recessive gold gene, some of the babies would be Jade. It looks like a fine amount of water to me. Mine was a lot less, so I would wet it twice a day, but the tops and bottoms still dried out. I hope you have some luck with yours!

Yes Pringlethesnail is where I got almost all of my information. She is a sweet person and has been almost fully responsible for my success with all my snail babies.
Man I hope so too. Maybe if it has been too damp the middle eggs are still ok. The clutch is about 8 days old so I can only hope.

 

All of the first clutch are pea sized, most of those are about dime sized now. Keeping food available 24/7 makes them grow very quickly, I mean a visible difference in one day. Most still seem kinda jade, but the likely hood of that is ~0%, and some of the larger ones are just now starting to grow in stripes.
Turns out they really like live blackworms, like a lot.

 

Any pictures?

 

I will as soon as I find my flashlight.... I put it somewhere last night during the hail storm (it's 90° out during the day, but sure, let's have a little hail storm)
Edit: I moved them to an unlit tank, so pictures don't show them

Well, they're not very good, but here's the best I could get. They do look a good but darker in person

 

Rtessy you should try an experiment, when you find a color variation you like you should take a few away from the normal tank and keep in a separate tank. Mystery snails Along with other snails have a harder outside layer ofshell called a periostricum when raised in captivity they are fed Well speeding up their growth rate meaning they will be more translucent . If you were to feed at a slower rate( not starve) it would give them a more solid dark coloration because the periostricum would be thicker at a slower growth rate. Obviously only certain colors would be appealing in this particular situation but I feel like yours would be in this case. I’m trying this on a couple of golds at the moment , so we shall see lol.

 

I can't get mine to hatch either. Mine is usually because they get flooded. Last one, snails knocked it off side of tank lid, but it was not that long. I had done my water change and this was a short time later, so been trying to hatch them. I have to look up the date but they still look pinkish. Another time, was doing water change and water got into the tub they are in soaking them again, but again caught it pretty fast.

No idea what I am doing wrong.

 

I can't get mine to hatch either. Mine is usually because they get flooded. Last one, snails knocked it off side of tank lid, but it was not that long. I had done my water change and this was a short time later, so been trying to hatch them. I have to look up the date but they still look pinkish. Another time, was doing water change and water got into the tub they are in soaking them again, but again caught it pretty fast.

No idea what I am doing wrong.

Sometimes as pet parents we do nothing wrong lol. Mysteries will lay eggs regardless of fertilization so often times we simply incubate an unfertalized clutch . It’s good practice to just incubate every clutch to make sure. It’s like buying a scratcher ticket lol .

 

Rtessy you should try an experiment, when you find a color variation you like you should take a few away from the normal tank and keep in a separate tank. Mystery snails Along with other snails have a harder outside layer ofshell called a periostricum when raised in captivity they are fed Well speeding up their growth rate meaning they will be more translucent . If you were to feed at a slower rate( not starve) it would give them a more solid dark coloration because the periostricum would be thicker at a slower growth rate. Obviously only certain colors would be appealing in this particular situation but I feel like yours would be in this case. I’m trying this on a couple of golds at the moment , so we shall see lol.

Very good to know, thank you! That makes a lot of sense, with shell growth and all. So far these are presenting an interesting color, the actual shell seems to be a bit green, so the snails appear sort of like an olive green with the dark foot. I do have another 5.5 with my betta, and one snail already wound up there, so I may as well add another.
Hey, you're a really good snail person, maybe you can answer this:
The baby snail tank is over 50 feet away on carpeted floor from the betta tank, I use separate equipment on the two tanks, but somehow a baby ended up in the betta tank! That one is also growing the fastest, without being fed, but there's so much infusoria and biofilm I'm not surprised.
On the topic of colors, I remember this other thread where someone ended up with an ivory mystery snail that presented with reddish purple stripes, but there weren't that many stripes, so it looked a good bit like a peppermint. I would love to get my hands on some of those guys, that would be pretty neat.
Edit: Zoomo I'm sorry, it really just sounds like a lot for bad luck. I hope it works out for you soon

 

Very good to know, thank you! That makes a lot of sense, with shell growth and all. So far these are presenting an interesting color, the actual shell seems to be a bit green, so the snails appear sort of like an olive green with the dark foot. I do have another 5.5 with my betta, and one snail already wound up there, so I may as well add another.
Hey, you're a really good snail person, maybe you can answer this:
The baby snail tank is over 50 feet away on carpeted floor from the betta tank, I use separate equipment on the two tanks, but somehow a baby ended up in the betta tank! That one is also growing the fastest, without being fed, but there's so much infusoria and biofilm I'm not surprised.
On the topic of colors, I remember this other thread where someone ended up with an ivory mystery snail that presented with reddish purple stripes, but there weren't that many stripes, so it looked a good bit like a peppermint. I would love to get my hands on some of those guys, that would be pretty neat.
Edit: Zoomo I'm sorry, it really just sounds like a lot for bad luck. I hope it works out for you soon

Well they sure are escape artists lol but that seems like an impossible journey! Did you move plants from one location to the other?

Yeah I’d love to figure that combination out! Sounds beautiful, maybe a combination of magenta and hmmmm would make that color morph. A future endeavor for sure!

 

Well they sure are escape artists lol but that seems like an impossible journey! Did you move plants from one location to the other?

Yeah I’d love to figure that combination out! Sounds beautiful, maybe a combination of magenta and hmmmm would make that color morph. A future endeavor for sure!

Yeah, it was quite an interesting combination! It seemed a bit more red than the normal magenta, but maybe that's just how the color looks when the stripes are spaced.
As for the tanks, that's the thing. There was literally no transfer of anything between the tanks, and both have lids... Haha, I was just so surprised to see one in the betta tank.

 

Yeah, it was quite an interesting combination! It seemed a bit more red than the normal magenta, but maybe that's just how the color looks when the stripes are spaced.
As for the tanks, that's the thing. There was literally no transfer of anything between the tanks, and both have lids... Haha, I was just so surprised to see one in the betta tank.

Hahah that my friend is your super snail lol

 

Rtessy you should try an experiment, when you find a color variation you like you should take a few away from the normal tank and keep in a separate tank. Mystery snails Along with other snails have a harder outside layer ofshell called a periostricum when raised in captivity they are fed Well speeding up their growth rate meaning they will be more translucent . If you were to feed at a slower rate( not starve) it would give them a more solid dark coloration because the periostricum would be thicker at a slower growth rate. Obviously only certain colors would be appealing in this particular situation but I feel like yours would be in this case. I’m trying this on a couple of golds at the moment , so we shall see lol.

I'm doing this with my babies now. I currently feed them a large amount once a day before I go to bed and I have their temp at 74 to 75. The big ones are about 5 weeks old and the smaller ones about 3 weeks old. If you look close you should be able to make out stripes on some.

On the topic of colors, I remember this other thread where someone ended up with an ivory mystery snail that presented with reddish purple stripes, but there weren't that many stripes, so it looked a good bit like a peppermint. I would love to get my hands on some of those guys, that would be pretty neat

This sounds like a light variant of the offspring of an ivory and chestnut snail.
I currently have a TON of chestnut babies. Lol. They will look to similar to this. Some will be much lighter and some will be this dark.

 

I'm doing this with my babies now. I currently feed them a large amount once a day before I go to bed and I have their temp at 74 to 75. The big ones are about 5 weeks old and the smaller ones about 3 weeks old. If you look close you should be able to make out stripes on some.
View attachment 458253
View attachment 458252

This sounds like a light variant of the offspring of an ivory and chestnut snail.
I currently have a TON of chestnut babies. Lol. They will look to similar to this. Some will be much lighter and some will be this dark.
View attachment 458243
View attachment 458246

Aw, they're so cute! What cross/type are they?
And I think you're dead on, the color definitely sounds like a cross between an ivory and Chestnut, that makes a lot of sense.

 

Aw, they're so cute! What cross/type are they?
And I think you're dead on, the color definitely sounds like a cross between an ivory and Chestnut, that makes a lot of sense.

The momma is Chestnut(pictures above) and the daddy is Magenta(picture below).
Since they are my mating pair I named them Gary(pink snail) and Ms. Tuffsey. (Hopefully somebody gets it lol)