Thursday, June 05, 2008

Pictures of Apple Snail ("Golden Mystery Snail") Laying Eggs

We have two apple snails (sold as an "ivory mystery snail" and a "golden mystery snail") in our small 6 gallon Eclipse tank. Evidently, the golden snail is a female and the ivory snail is a male, and so they mate all the time. In most tanks, this isn't a problem because the amphibious apple snails have to leave the water to lay their eggs and they can't do that when the tank has a lid on it. However, the Eclipse tank has a large dome-shaped lid so that everything (pump, filter, etc.) can be built into it. So, our female has been crawling up into the lid and laying eggs.

This morning, I couldn't find the female in the bottom part of the tank, and so I lifted the lid... and there she was! I've never seen pictures of an apple snail LAYING eggs, so I thought I'd take some. Unfortunately, they came out kinda blurry, but at least it's something!
You can see the egg sac she's laying right next to her. You can see that as she moves backward, the egg sac gets longer.

In the first picture, on another part of the lid, are some of the remnants of an old egg sac that has hatched (before we realized she was leaving the tank to lay her eggs).

Anyone have any ideas about how to prevent the snails from leaving the water? (note: throwing away the tank is not an option) We'd move the snails to our big tank that has a flat lid, but we're pretty sure our freshwater puffer would slowly dine on the snails until they died a long slow death.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i have a golden snail laying her eggs at this moment. its my first time seeing this, as for my boyfriend. we're really excited for the mommy snail. and guess what? our male snail is mating with another snail at this moment! its crazy!
but anyways, id thought itd be nice to share this similar experience with you.
id also like to point out that i don't think its right that you let your snails die a SLOW PAINFUL death...
if you don't want your snails anymore, give them to someone else who would care for them or do something else that wouldnt require them to suffer.
just because their snails, doesnt mean they should suffer. dying shouldnt be painful for any life, big or small. and im pretty sure you wouldnt want your life to end that way.
so do the right thing and don't let any creature you're responsible for suffer.

Ted Pavlic said...

In your excitement, I think you missed a few words when reading my post. In particular, "Anyone have any ideas about how to prevent the snails from leaving the water? (note: throwing away the tank is not an option) We'd move the snails to our big tank that has a flat lid, but we're pretty sure our freshwater puffer would slowly dine on the snails until they died a long slow death."

We were *NOT* moving the snails to the big tank specifically because we didn't want them to die a long slow death. We are asking how to prevent the snails from leaving the water given that we cannot put a shallow lid on the tank (because of the shape of the tank).

It's no matter now. Like others on the Internet had suggested, those snails died in their bottom tank. Evidently it is difficult to get them to live very long in an aquarium. Since then, we haven't had luck finding snails that would mate. Pet stores insist they put something in the water that sterilizes snails, but I'm pretty sure they're referring to clonal aquatic snails and not sexual amphibious snails (i.e., apple snails). That being said, unless we've just never found a male and female, we haven't had mating apple snails in a long time.