# I think I might try apple/mystery snails!



## humdedum (Feb 18, 2009)

So help egoreise and TOS and let me know if this sounds good...  

Empty ten gallon tank, empty inch of air above the water line. Simple glass hood something like this or I might make a DIY similarly built hood. Whichever is cheaper, lol. Whisper 40 filter because I like to make sure I have lots of filter capacity. 

Temperature around 75 or 77 (?), whichever you recommend. My water is super hard and pH is 8.4; I doubt there will be mineral deficiency in the water, but if there is, I can feed something from my kitchen like kale. I'd like to give a shot at breeding snails -- I've never intentionally kept inverts before, but egoreise really adores her snails, so evil her. 

How many snails should I get? Is there something I need to know? Are algae wafers and bottom feeder tablets okay, with fresh foods like lettuce and kale?

I have scoured the web and read many articles, but want to run everything past you. 

Thanks in advance!
Hummy


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## egoreise (Mar 16, 2011)

Evil me!  I really do adore my snails. They actually eat directly out of my hand now!


Breeding: If you've read a lot, I'm sure that you've figured out you can't breed apple snails without a male and a female. Apparently, telling them apart is a pain in the rear. 
One option is to buy like 3 or 4 snails for your community tank. Keep an eye on them, and you'll soon figure out which ones are which when they start breeding. The male will climb onto the female's shell. (She may appear to be struggling to get him off the first couple times, but DO NOT try to seperate them. You can cause a lot of damage. They can sort it out on their own).
At that point, you could leave them in the tank, wait for the eggs to appear, and move those. Or, now that you know you have a male and a female, you can move them into your ten gallon tank. If you want to breed them there, you can certainly afford to lower the water level more than one inch. They will use the space to lay more eggs if you provide it!
If you chose to leave them in your community tank, your eggs will have to be moved, as suggested earlier in this thread. The eggs will need to harden before you attempt to move them. They do need to remain above water, but in a moist environment.
There may be hundreds of eggs, but keep in mind that some will not hatch. And then after that, some of the babies will die. They will come out suuper tiny. And soft. So leave them be. As soon as they are born, they will be ready to eat the same thing as their parents. Just break the food up into tiny bits and scatter it about so they never have to travel far to find it.

Feeding: Snails are not too picky! In a well established community tank, they can be very self-sufficiant. They will eat algae you didn't even know existed. You'll see them on the glass, chewing away (if you pick snails with a dark body, this is super fun, because the inside of their mouth is much lighter in contrast, and you can see all the teeth and stuff! >_< ). But we like to spoil our little aquatic friends, right?  I like to break algae wafers into small bits for them. They will also eat leftover fish foods that fall to the bottom of the tank. They've even been known to go to the top of the tank and catch floating foods with their little air tube thing that they can extend out from their bodies (though I've never seen mine do that... they must be content with the amount of food in the water!). As mine got larger, they got less shy. So now, when they are on the glass, I will hold an algae wafer right in front of them and they will chew it as long as I hold it there.
The one thing most apple snails, including the "mystery" snails you find at most pet stores, will not eat is live plants. Not unless they are starving. So no worries there. 




Ohhh and one other thing to remember is that in lower temperatures (like 70 to 74 degrees, I think), their average lifespan is 4 years. But then when you increase the temperature to what most of us keep our tanks at, their livespan is drastically decreased to an average of one year. It's sort of a trade-off... because in warmer temperatures, they will hatch sooner, grow faster, breed more, ec t....


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## egoreise (Mar 16, 2011)

Oh... and I would get 3 to 5 snails. Because you'll be a far cry from overstocking your tank, but you will have a good chance of having both males and females. That tank will get fully stocked once they breed, anyway.


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## MetalHead (Aug 18, 2010)

i wouldnt suggest a mystery snail. they tend to over run the tank sooner than you like. I have kept apple snails before and i never really fed them. they scavenged what ever was available including cichlid eggs. 

imo apple snails will be easier to breed since they lay their eggs above the water line in most cases where as mystery snails at some point will over run your tank.

Click here for a decent article about breeding them.


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## egoreise (Mar 16, 2011)

Mystery snails are a type of apple snail.  I've had four of them for a while now, and no problems with them overrunning the tank. They do lay their eggs above the water, as well. Their eggs are very easy to spot and get rid of if you have to. And if you do let them hatch in your community tank, they will most likely be eaten.

I wonder if they market a different type of snail as a mystery snail in your area?


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## MetalHead (Aug 18, 2010)

maybe its just me.....i hate snails. kept the apples to keep the algae in check while i was messing with a high tech setup for my tanks. hate snails. like no tomorrow.


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## egoreise (Mar 16, 2011)

hahaha! You wouldn't be the first. Perhaps you had an infestation of another type of snail, along with your mystery snails.

Mystery snails cannot lay their eggs underwater. The developing babies would drown.


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## MetalHead (Aug 18, 2010)

possibly Egoreise. Wouldnt know. I see a snail i wanna kill it. The only snail i have in my tank right now is a MTS. single loner dude who seems quite happy by hum self. He survived cos his shell is a beautiful black and while color that caught my attention.


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## egoreise (Mar 16, 2011)

oooh very cool.  Hope he doesn't multiply!


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## humdedum (Feb 18, 2009)

egoreise said:


> Mystery snails are a type of apple snail.  I've had four of them for a while now, and no problems with them overrunning the tank. They do lay their eggs above the water, as well. Their eggs are very easy to spot and get rid of if you have to. And if you do let them hatch in your community tank, they will most likely be eaten.
> 
> I wonder if they market a different type of snail as a mystery snail in your area?


I think snails have been crossed and hybridized so many times for coloration, it's all muddled up now.  

Could I pop in maybe 5 in my 50 gallon, until I find a pair (goodness, this is starting to sound like cichlids! ), and then shift them to the 10 gallon? Should I remove the parents once the eggs or laid, or do they not cannibalize?

I could use a 25 watt heater and keep it at 70 degrees. There we go. 

Thank you so much for taking the time to write all that! Very, very appreciated, egoreise!


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## egoreise (Mar 16, 2011)

You could just pop five in your 10 gallon, with the water already lowered for the eggs, and you would be just fine. I like having them in my community tanks, though. 
Keep in mind that in the community tank, fish will sometimes nip at their feelers. No big deal. They won't be as long, but the snail will keep them tucked in. My fish seem to have grown tired of messing with the snails. So the feelers have grown back, at least mostly, and they don't often tuck them in.

Speaking of colors, I recommend the ivory (or blue) and the golden ones.  In my tanks, they seem to have grown larger, and prettier. Their eggs apparently develop color that will indicate what color the babies will be... but I don't know what any of the colors mean yet. Mine are salmon pink.


As far as I know, they will not cannibalize their young. The babies are known to hide under their parents' shells! >_< cute.


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## egoreise (Mar 16, 2011)

> Thank you so much for taking the time to write all that! Very, very appreciated, egoreise!


Not a problem at all!


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## humdedum (Feb 18, 2009)

I actually did a little bit of fish shifting (moved a convict from my ten to my twenty) so I may need to keep up the bioload in the ten now that a certain messy cichlid is out! 

I'm thinking three will be about the bioload of a two-inch fish? Maybe even four because the fish tends to be rather poopy (not even sure where he gets all the food, lol).


Do you know of any equivalent bioload charts/sites that could help me?


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## egoreise (Mar 16, 2011)

hmmm... would aqadvisor.com work?


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## egoreise (Mar 16, 2011)

Seems to me that if you went to aqadvisor and entered in your tank stats with the convict, took note of the results, and then took him out of the equation and started adding snails, you could compare the results...

Not the same, I know. But I don't know any bioload sites. I guess if your snails added up to just a bit more bioload than your convict, it would be like you added something small to the tank and had a mini cycle?


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## humdedum (Feb 18, 2009)

Ah, that's a good idea! Actually the site told me my convict wouldn't fit into my ten-gallon, lol, but he's only 2 inches...

Some of those snails in the store look so big, they could be twice the bioload of something like a danio!


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## egoreise (Mar 16, 2011)

Oooh yes. They do carry a bioload! But five should live quite comfortably in a ten gallon.


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## humdedum (Feb 18, 2009)

Wow...that's creepy.  According to aqadvisor, one 2.5 inch convict is only 1% more bioload than 5 apple snails. 

There also is one betta in there, but he's sort of a constant in this whole scheme.


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## egoreise (Mar 16, 2011)

Ahh... that betta could eat your baby snails!


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## humdedum (Feb 18, 2009)

Ooh, yeah, bettas love little snails. I had one that did pretty well keeping my pond snail infestation at bay!

He's in his own little corner; if they don't somehow squeeze themselves in through the slats, I don't think he'd be much of a threat.


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