Am I Mystery snailing right?

Drapony

Member
One of my 3 Mystery Snails surprised us with eggs (we thought they where all male) and thankful I had been setting up to get cherry shrimps, so I'm going to try and hatch them out in the little tank. I just don't know if I'm incubating them right.

The tank is a 3.5g they aren't staying in it, there just to small to go in the main tank if they hatch and my local store won't buy then tell there about 2 months old.

IMG_20220330_085814.jpgIMG_20220330_085753.jpg
 
Last edited:

Drapony

Member
I'm trying to figure out how to attach pics on my phone, please be patient with me x.x

Bypass phone issue with computer XD
 
Last edited:

John58Ford

Well-Known Member
Cool lid/spillway. I grow/hatch mystery snails, the method you are using is the second best I've found. The first best is leaving them where they put them. The issue with your method is that the bowl is likely to be either too dry, or too flooded. With a bowl too dry the snails will starve and dehydrate before they make the trek all the way to the water. Think ant man, time-space grows as you shrink, these little guys come out the size of a fingerprint groove, crawling all the way across that dry foodless bowl is like walking across the state of Washington.

I've had good luck relocating the eggs to lily pads and other floating plants if I was worried about predation but usually the dirty/algae dripping humid areas on the glass lids are what works the best. If you want to improve the floating method, try finding a smaller floating item you can drape a paper towel off the side of into the water. The water will wick up the paper towel, set the egg clutch right on top of that. You can get some bonus in if you can scrounge up enough algae to turn the paper towel green (use it to wipe the lid above an air stone maybe) and use it that way.

Finally, not every clutch will have a good hatch rate, sometimes the eggs are just outright dormant. It can happen, I had 3 of my last 5 but hatch well, but the most recent one hatched at a near pest snail rate. I haven't figured out what causes this (it's only my 5-6th full generation) but nature has been pretty good at finding a way.

Here's a shot of a fresh hatched baby. If you need to help them into the water remember to use wet fingers and be careful not to roll/crush them as the operculum is very fragile at this size.
20211116_140010~2.jpg
 

Drapony

Member
Cool lid/spillway. I grow/hatch mystery snails, the method you are using is the second best I've found. The first best is leaving them where they put them. The issue with your method is that the bowl is likely to be either too dry, or too flooded. With a bowl too dry the snails will starve and dehydrate before they make the trek all the way to the water. Think ant man, time-space grows as you shrink, these little guys come out the size of a fingerprint groove, crawling all the way across that dry foodless bowl is like walking across the state of Washington.

I've had good luck relocating the eggs to lily pads and other floating plants if I was worried about predation but usually the dirty/algae dripping humid areas on the glass lids are what works the best. If you want to improve the floating method, try finding a smaller floating item you can drape a paper towel off the side of into the water. The water will wick up the paper towel, set the egg clutch right on top of that. You can get some bonus in if you can scrounge up enough algae to turn the paper towel green (use it to wipe the lid above an air stone maybe) and use it that way.

Finally, not every clutch will have a good hatch rate, sometimes the eggs are just outright dormant. It can happen, I had 3 of my last 5 but hatch well, but the most recent one hatched at a near pest snail rate. I haven't figured out what causes this (it's only my 5-6th full generation) but nature has been pretty good at finding a way.

Here's a shot of a fresh hatched baby. If you need to help them into the water remember to use wet fingers and be careful not to roll/crush them as the operculum is very fragile at this size.
Awesome! thank you so much, do you think the problem would be helped if I tape a plastic mesh (off a potato bag) like a hammock instead of the Tupperware? The only residents of the tank they will be hatching into are 5 little Trumpet Snails, so I'm not worried about predation (OMG baby so small XD )
 

John58Ford

Well-Known Member
Probably easier than taping mesh, if there aren't any big snails to tip it over, try using the containers lid instead of the bowl, it should be just boyant enough to work.
 

Drapony

Member
Probably easier than taping mesh, if there aren't any big snails to tip it over, try using the containers lid instead of the bowl, it should be just boyant enough to work.
Ok! Thank you for the info, now I just need to hope there going to be ok x.x

I stress about everything, so you help me with peace of mind <3
 

John58Ford

Well-Known Member
Don't worry, if you have 3 of them (adult mystery snails) I would expect 5-7 eggs each before they die. Hatches between 30 and 100 are pretty common, and in my fairly clean (low food source) tanks I get about 1:10 survival to adult. (6X60)/10=36 lifetime candidates per adult snail at my intentionally limited survival rate. Typically the store I sell to occasionally only needs 10 at a time and it's not worth a craigslist meet up (IMO) to sell them individually. At most I like 1 mystery per ten gallons of tank (adults) so it's pretty easy to end up with too many of them; even if you run 9+ tanks, I think I've offered to give them away to everyone here when meeting up lol.
 
Last edited:

Drapony

Member
Don't worry, if you have 3 of them (adult mystery snails) I would expect 5-7 eggs each before they die. Hatches between 30 and 100 are pretty common, and in my fairly clean (low food source) tanks I get about 1:10 survival to adult. (6X60)/10=36 lifetime candidates per adult snail at my intentionally limited survival rate. Typically the store I sell to occasionally only needs 10 at a time and it's not worth a craigslist meet up (IMO) to sell them individually. At most I like 1 mystery per ten gallons of tank (adults) so it's pretty easy to end up with too many of them; even if you run 9+ tanks, I think I've offered to give them away to everyone here when meeting up lol.
Ya, thankfully I live a 30 min buss ride from 7 different stores, so I'm (hoping) enough places willing to take pretty babys, but hay push comes to shove, my kids school has a large aquarium I can donate a to XD
 
Top