# What color will my mystery snail babies be?



## Nijis

I have had a golden mystery snail for about a month now. He seemed a little lonely, so I picked up a friend (blackish/brownish mystery snail with stripes) for him a couple of days ago. Well it turns out his friend is a girl and they started to get very friendly. I did a lot of research on raising mystery snail babies, and I think I got it all down. I couldn't find anything, however, on what color the babies will be. As I said earlier, the male is a golden, and the female is a black mystery snail with stripes.

Thanks for any help!


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## poolplayerpro3

i have 4 mystery snails in my tank one white, and three golden so far all my babies have been black but i always find them in my filters so i dontk now if their still alive but when i put them back into the tank my fish eat them so if you have cichlids like i do when they do have babies dont put them in the tank with your fish as they wont make it to the bottom


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## iheartfish:)

To determine any color, you need to understand the genetics of mystery snails and work with that knowledge accordingly. There are many questions to answer before you can know, but you can always guess, too. The most important questions to answer this question are:
Which colors are recessive and dominant? I am willing to bet that the gold one is recessive and black is dominant. 
What are their histories? This question is pretty much impossible to answer in snails 

If, however, we assume that the black one is BB (Dominant black, only black) and the gold one is gg (Recessive gold, of course it needs two g's to be gold), then out of every four babies, you should get all blacks. However, in the next generation, if they breed sibling to sibling, you will get some golds. 
First gen.
......... *B B*

......*g* Bg Bg

.....* g* Bg Bg

Second gen

........ *B ....g*

.......*B* BB Bg

.......*g* Bg gg

In the second generation, you should get one gold to every three blacks. 

Of course, this was done with a lot of assuming, and will probably not be right  But it's the basics.


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## Sorafish

Ya know, this is a very interesting question. I started with a brown shell Ramshorn(brown skin) of unknown decent, who bred with another Ramshorn, who's color I have no clue, and 50% of my babies were leopard spotted(brown skin), 25% were the original brown(brown skin), and 25% were gold(pink skin).
If the colors in snails are the same, despite species, then you can assume that the gold is, indeed, a recessive gene.

HOWEVER, the fact that you got the female a few days ago says that the babies are most likely NOT from your male. I had my Ramshorn for about a week before she started laying eggs, so its highly likely that snails have a wait time before they lay their eggs.
I've also observed my Ramshorns mating, and then laying eggs about 5 days later.

A good way to make sure they survive would be to take the snails out, place them in a bare bottom, 1 gallon tank, wait until they've laid enough eggs that you're sure you have a good colony started, then put the adults back in. Wait for the babies to grow big enough not to be eaten, then throw them in the main tank and let population control do its work.


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## iheartfish:)

Genetics is indeed a very interesting concept.  I love it.


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