Breeding Mystery Snails for Puffer food

[scpion]

You are unbelievable.. I just throw in whatever fish food I can find... cheapest...

[RTR]

I do not and will not keep any pet which I cannot house and care for properly. That is a personal choice thing.

[chrispaul]

Hey guys!

Dear Scpion, that's perfectly fine to

Dear RTR, Okay, Okay, I am usually a very good pet care taker. However, apparently I'm not as perfect as you. I apologize . You make me feel like a horrible person.

Dear all, [flash=]My mystery snails mated yesterday!! [/flash] I saw one of the mails mount the female and instead of her shaking him off and refusing as always, he succeeded! Within a few weeks I expect a clutch and then I will wait for the clutch to dry and then scrape it off the glass with a razor blade and credit card and then incubate it. I wasn't going to incubate it but I heard if I left it on the glass there is a chance it will fall in the water and the eggs will drown. I'm very happy, I can't believe my hard work is starting to slowly pay off. I hope everything goes well though... Also on an entirely different note: I put the 100 baby pest snails, that I got free from Pet smart, in a one gallon tank. I will keep you guys updated. I have mostly pound snails, a few rams horn, and 3 of them look like baby mystery snails. I really hope I can get this show on the road quickly because my Puffer is getting a little tired of fish flakes, crisps, and blood worms. He wants some snails!

[scpion]

What puffer are u keeping Btw?

[bertie 83]

If you got about 100 pests throw some in, you don't need too many to become overrun lol. I can guarantee rtr was not trying to make you feel bad, his decades of fishkeeping have taught him and all here masses. He will get straight to the point and that's just how he is. We wouldn't have him any other way, he's awesome.

[chrispaul]

Hey Y'all!!!

Dear scpion, I am caring for a Green spotted puffer. I bought him at Wal Mart (buy fish from Wal Mart is the worst sin in all of fishkeeping, I know, but I just couldn't find a GSP anywhere else!)

Dear Bertie 83, That's what I already started doing! My puffer (Frankenstein) loved the pond snails. Also about RTR, if that's his personalty then it's all cool, I'm new here so I thought he seemed rude, now I know he is just helping me. THANKS RTR!!!!

DEAR ALL, I went to home depot today and bought a five gallon bucket to breed the pest snails in. I knew the one gallon was to small for that many pest snails, so I did research to see the best way and more than one source said it's pretty simple to breed them in a bucket. I rinsed the bucket out with water. It was brand new so it was perfectly safe. I put an aquarium heater in the bucket and a small bridge ornament from my established tank to help seed the tank with nitrifying bacteria. I filled the tank with water then treated it, I then added baking soda to harden the water, I put some snello as well so they'll all get their necessary calcium and other nutrients. The water was set at 80 degrees Fahrenheit. I then put in a sponge filter and pluged in the pump. Then I put in the pest snails! To me they aren't exactly pests but I think it's simpler to call them that to differentiate them from my apple snails. I know I didn't wait 6 weeks for the bucket to completely cycle....but come on guys...they are pest snails. I don't think it will inhibit their breeding habits too much. However, if the free ammonia gets too high I'll just do water changes. I am putting a few pest snails them into the puffer tank every day from now on. If I ever run out of them I can just pick up more from Pet smart for free!

[bertie 83]

Pest snails make soo much mess you will wind up swapping out plenty of water. I never added baking soda to mine, doesn't this mess with the gh/kh of the water? I use a weighed down cuttlebone and lots of fresh water to great success. By the way congratulations you are now a fish addict lol

[RTR]

Sodium Bicarbonate increases the KH. It does not affect the GH.

Bicarb addition in fish-occupied tanks is perhaps the commonest cause of "pH shock" fish death (which does not often exist in reality - it is osmotic shock from the extremely rapid solution of sodium bicarbonate).

HTH

[chrispaul]

WAZZUP!?

Dear bertie 83, I added half of a cuttle bone (I broke it off the cuttle bone from my other tank) and weighed it down with the bridge ornament to my baby snail bucket, I really hope I can keep this bucket going for a while and have success and not to much trouble. I'm glad to be a part of this fun hobby.

Dear RTR, Okay this is pretty pathetic of me to ask...but what exactly is KH? or GH? I know what the hardness of the water is (the amount of minerals in the water right?) You gotta bear with me cuz I'm new.

DEAR ALL, My Mystery snail's shell look great and strong so I am glad they are getting the ample amount of calcium.

[bertie 83]

Carbonate hardness and general hardness

[bertie 83]

Remember snails are mucky pups so keep changing their water

[RTR]

Sorry, GH is as bertie said "General" hardness, which real translates into Calcium and Magnesium hardness. The hobby test kit measures the entire group - which is the "Alkali Earth Metals" - but the others in the group are rare enough that we are unlikely to have any significant quantity in our water. General Hardness is NOT a measure of all dissolved material/ions in the water. It is limited to that specific part of the Periodic Table.. There ate no hobby test kits which can measure total ions in water. For that you need to move up to field or lab grade instruments such as refractometers, densinsitometers, osmometers, etc.

KH or Carbonate Hardness is a measure of the carbonate/bicarbonate ions in water.

HTH

[chrispaul]

Dear Bertie, Thanks for the info, yeah I'll keep changing the water.

Dear RTR, Okay That helps a lot!

DEAR ALL, I'm probably not going to be logging in very frequently because I got all the information I'll ever need, and all my questions have been answered. If my snails breed, I'll let you guys know, and if I have any more questions I'll just post on this thread, but until then THANK YOU and GOOD BYE!!

[bertie 83]

It's our pleasure. Nip in regularly even if your head feels like it will explode from info overload. Lol

[Tetro]

I grew applesnails and mystery snails (pomacea species) for a year or so, eventually I lost them during a power outage in winter when the temps indoors got to about 35*F

While it is said that they reproduce slowly, that was not my experience. The do grow slow when overcrowded.... however I bought adults and had eggs within a month, and the snails laid eggs about twice a week. In less than 2 months in 3, 10 gallon aquariums, I had many hundreds of baby snails. I ran several 10 gallons as nursery tanks and for as long as I had them the snails did very well and were prolific in terms of egg production. I was (and still am) a member of the applesnail.net forum and a lot of growers report egg production that is so ridiculously prolific that they throw them away. These snails are an invasive species because their reproductive strategy allows for prolific population explosions, ergo they are illegal in several states and nations.

I mostly fed them weeds from the yard, with some lima beans and brussel sprouts here and there. I used an assortment of filtration systems and all of them worked quite well, I only had one older adult die before the cold snap issue, not counting mortality of the tiny baby snails which is impossible to keep up on because they are tiny. I had been breeding them for specific color morphs.

as for being messy... I don't know about that, I guess so. I had to clean the filters 2X a week. I never had eggs fall into the water and drown... I would just leave them alone and lots of baby snails would hatch.

I used this site as an invaluable resource:
http://www.applesnail.net/


the snails have a temperature dependent metabolism, they grow faster and live shorter lives at higher temps, and are more prolific, but their quality is not as high in my experience, if I was to grow them as a food i would use high temp conditions.

At the right circumstances an apple snail can produce one clutch of eggs every 4-7 days during several weeks

The site also mentions that for the mystery snail: " An average egg-clutch contains 200 to 600 eggs.
You can easily get 300 eggs laid by a single snail 1-2 times a week for 3 weeks, in the area of 1000-2000 eggs in about a month. If you have a few females then you can easily outproduce your capacity to house and care for them, as is all too common for people who run snail tanks.

http://www.applesnail.net/content/care.php

I have already collected freshwater snails for food sources for Dwarf Puffers and begun culturing them out to have a clean stock ready for when I get some puffer tanks going. In this case however the snail is the New Zealand mudsnail, Potamopyrgus antipodarum, a tiny invasive species that can reach very high densities. (It can reach concentrations above 500,000 per m²)