# breeding Neritina natalensis



## Bymer

Gentlemen, 

I announce my new endeavor: I plan to breed the Zebra Nerite Snail.
Now after doing about 2 weeks of research, i came to the conclusion that no one in the hobbyist field was able to breed a full grown snail. Or if has, doesn't want to publish his intellectual property on the internet. 

I plan on experimenting and if successful i will publish my guide on how to breed them. 

Now Zebra Nerite Snail lay eggs in freshwater, the eggs hatch, but for proper development they need brackish water. 

My plan is as fallows. Getting a small tank, maybe a 9 gallon or even smaller. hooking up an air pump to plus air stone, and try to transfer some of the small hatched snails in there. 

The only question to this is since i never had any salt/brackish tank, is how do i make this wonder by the name of "brackish water" work... lol

How do i produce the brackish water? do i just add salt to water? how do i measure the salinity of the water?


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## emc7

You get brackish water by adding marine salt, which is just dried up seawater, to water. Something like "instant ocean" should work. Or you can buy saltwater at the store and dilute it with fresh. Brackish includes a wide range a salinities, though. I would start buy buying a device such as a hydrometer that tells you what the water's salinity is.


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## ChromeLibrarian

Ok, can you do this?

Watch for eggs to be laid. Remove adult snails, change tank over to brackish?


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## Bymer

yah, the overall idea is that as follows;
they hatch in freshwater, you transfer them to brackish water, and over time you lower the salinity of the water back to freshwater so the snail has time to adapt. But that's all in theory, no one on the internet has ever done it (and lived to tell about it... lol... ), everybody just talks about it. So i want to try it  



ChromeLibrarian said:


> Ok, can you do this?
> 
> Watch for eggs to be laid. Remove adult snails, change tank over to brackish?


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## emc7

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brackish According to this there is 60 fold range of water salinities that can be considered "brackish". Can you narrow down your parameters. Do you know which body of water the young snail grow up in? Otherwise I think you might want to try 10 tanks of various salinities.


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## TheOldSalt

What you need is a Hydrometer. This cheap & simple device tells you how dense your water is, and thusly how salty.
A good brackish range of density is 1.009- 1.012. The higher the number, the saltier.
Freshwater is 1.000, and seawater is 1.024.


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## Bymer

sooo, my latest news update... i have my brand new hydrometer!
now that i am armed and dangerous my question is as follows: since i don't have any brackish water, i think it would make since to by some salt water. 

if i buy some salt water from a pet store, how long can i store it in a container before something happens to it? they sell it by the gallon, and im thinking of just buying a canister and using it bit by bit as needed. 

also what do you guys think, does my project need an air pump + small filter, or a jar and a heater will do the trick. 

I have a tank for medical my purposes, but its kinda huge for breeding small snails... lol...


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## emc7

i vote for a filter, even if its just a wad of filter floss on an airline. Anything the eats, poops. So you want some biological filtration. if you just do jars, you will have to change all the water every few days like you would with a betta bowl.


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