Nerite snail breeding

[Oded Aquatics]

Does anybody have any experience with breeding Nerite snails? 
What is the “easiest” spiecis?

[FrozenFins]

If your looking for the easiest nirite snail to breed: 

The theodoxus fluviatilis snail is part of the nritie snail family, but breeds in freshwater. I think its pretty rare though, the thread I linked will have more information.

[Levi_Aquatics]

I have always wanted to try to breed nerites because they breed in brackish! there is very little info out there.

[Squid88]

I have the same question. I have a brackish tank for my fiddler crabs, and I have wondered if I need to raise the salinity of the snails water gradually? or if I can just "throw in" some nerites from another tank? or is there a way to remove the nerite eggs (from a freshwater tank) without damaging them to add to the brackish tank?

[Kirsten]

1 hour ago, Squid88 said:

I have the same question. I have a brackish tank for my fiddler crabs, and I have wondered if I need to raise the salinity of the snails water gradually? or if I can just "throw in" some nerites from another tank? or is there a way to remove the nerite eggs (from a freshwater tank) without damaging them to add to the brackish tank?

One way to find out! 😄

I've tried the egg transfer process to a small brackish tank and it didn't take, but the eggs may have been old. I'm not even sure if they were fertilized.

I hear that nerites can handle being just chucked into a mildly brackish situation, but if possible, I'd say the safest bet is to slowly acclimate them.

I hear it can be very hard to successfully hatch and raise newborn nerites. They're free-swimming at first and are extremely small and not too many people know what they eat. I'm guessing infusoria of some kind! And they might have changing requirements for less salinity as they grow. Again, sadly little information out there.

[Kat_Rigel]

I'd like to try breeding these at some point. I think the red racers are especially cool.

[gardenman]

I'd always assumed someone somewhere was breeding them as they're so very inexpensive. It turns out I'm wrong. It appears they're all wild caught. I did find an extensive article on breeding them at aquariumbreeder.com and was surprised to find that the "eggs" we find in our tanks are actually egg cases and inside those cases are about seventy real eggs. That gives you an idea as to how small the baby snails are when they hatch. We're talking very, very small. Given the number of "eggs" my nerites laid, when you consider there are seventy fry in each one, they're very, very prolific in the wild. My tank would often have about a hundred egg cases (that I'd thought were the eggs) scattered around the tank. At seventy snails per egg case, mine would have hatched out about 7,000 snails from those hundred "eggs." Yikes! When they hatch they're free swimming planktonic and attracted to light. Feeding them becomes a bit of a challenge given their extremely small size. Suffice to say, you won't make any money breeding them. You could go broke trying, but getting them to a sellable size would take months/years. They are interesting though.

Edited February 12, 2021 by gardenman

[tolstoy21]

@Oded AquaticsI am very interested in taking a crack at breeding these as well.

I researched this a while ago and found a single post online that I can no longer find. Luckily I saved that to a txt file and still have it as a reference, so I am going to repost it here.

I wish I could find the original author, so whoever you are, thanks for this. (Mods if you feel this is unethical plagiarizing, please feel free to take this reply down, but I cannot find this post anywhere, otherwise I'd just link it).

Anyway, this is what i saved for myself for the day I want to take a crack at this . . .

(Again, original mystery author, much thanks for the knowledge).

Quote

Breeding Nerite Snails

Hey Yah. Well I’ve been breeding Nerites for a while. It seems to be a lot of confusion to a lot of people. Lets start off slow to clear the water from messy breeding details.
Nerites are A sexually. Once eggs are laid they can be transfer to a fully saltwater tank non brackish water I well explain this later. How do you get your little snails to lay eggs? More they’ll eat the more they’ll will to lay eggs. 99.9 percent of the time they’ll lay eggs on your glass rocks or hard surface. I usually wait about maximum 72 hours before moving the egg. In case my Nertie might want to lay a few more. I’ve notice my best Nerita are laid on drift wood. I well explain this in a bit and the reason why. It doesn't matter what kind of water you breed them in whether it be fresh salt or brackish. Let me be a little bit more clear about this. What will matter is how you will hatch these eggs. Nerite eggs can take a long time to hatch from a few days to a few weeks. I had a few eggs that hatched a month later. As far as water temperature my hatching is room temp. As cold as a bowl of goldfish water.

Alright time to get down to the good stuff with directions.
1. Pick a item(s) with some good algae mounted to it. Place this item where your Nerite well be. FRESH SALT OR BRACKISH WATER. What temp isn’t important. What quality should be at the best possible. I personally like using drift wood. Driftwood has tons of algae for these baby to feed.
2. Wait a few days. Until you see a good amount of eggs on item/decor. These eggs look like little sesame seeds. WARNING DONT TRY TO REMOVE THESE EGGS BY SCRAPPING THEM. You'll pop the shell. Wait about 72 hours to get a nice size decor with eggs on them.
3. Set up a small tank. I’m using a 1 gallon tank to nurse the babies nitrites. A air bubble line that is set very low 1bubble ever 2 seconds. Also a marine/saltwater (freshwater salt wont work). Why salt and no brackish. The reason is once these Nertie are born at this stage they need all the calcium and mineral to develop a health strong shell. Which well increase the level of survival as juveniles. I had little luck with brackish water. My percentage increased about 80 percent when I’ve hatched Nerite in fully saltwater tank. I usually fill the saltwater level just enough to cover the decor/driftwood.(this is where youll place your decor cover with eggs)
4. Usually about every 3 days I well perform a 50 percent water change. Don’t want your snail to die from bad water. This is easy to do. Don’t be lazy takes less then 5 mins.
5. Once your eggs are hatching. Theyll hatch at a very slow rate. You’ll see that they're very small larvae. You can feed them algae that's on your décor or driftwood. If not you can head to your local aquarium or pet shop. And purchase some algae chips.
Chop these algae chips into small fine grains. And drop them in your tank. Feed them by eye. If you don’t see any food. Give them food.
6. Once you see a nice shine to the shell on your snail, its time to move them. This process can take weeks. I don’t recommend one or 2 days. They'll die on you. Purchase a small measuring device. The measurement I am using is ML. For my one gallon tank. I would treat about gallon of freshwater(for people out there that don’t know what Im talking about treating your water. Neutralizing water from harmful chemicals using(Tetra Aqua Clear (or any other brand).Simply ever morning take out 10ml of tank water. Replace 5Ml in the morning and 5ML at night. For a full month. This step is only for freshwater tanks. For brackish or salt. Just lower the level of salt until you reach your tanks ppm. For a safe entry.
Enjoy your new NERITES. Usually i breed about 100 a month and sell them to my local pet shop.

 

Edited February 12, 2021 by tolstoy21

[Squid88]

Thank you so much this is gold @tolstoy21

Edited February 13, 2021 by Squid88

[Kirsten]

30 minutes ago, tolstoy21 said:

@Oded AquaticsI am very interested in taking a crack at breeding these as well.

I researched this a while ago and found a single post online that I can no longer find. Luckily I saved that to a txt file and still have it as a reference, so I am going to repost it here.

I wish I could find the original author, so whoever you are, thanks for this. (Mods if you feel this is unethical plagiarizing, please feel free to take this reply down, but I cannot find this post anywhere, otherwise I'd just link it).

Anyway, this is what i saved for myself for the day I want to take a crack at this . . .

(Again, original mystery author, much thanks for the knowledge).

 

That's so helpful! I definitely want to try again now with much higher salinity and more water changes. 

[tolstoy21]

Just now, Squid88 said:

Thank you so much this is gold

Well I haven’t tested this out myself yet. So I can’t validate these instructions work and are complete. Actually been planning to take this on in the next months.

If anyone else is successful with these instructions in the meantime, please let us know. 

[tolstoy21]

3 minutes ago, Kirsten said:

That's so helpful! I definitely want to try again now with much higher salinity and more water changes. 

I would try with a true aquarium salt like instant ocean. That’s my plan at least  

 

[Kirsten]

10 minutes ago, tolstoy21 said:

I would try with a true aquarium salt like instant ocean. That’s my plan at least  

 

Yup, have a big ol sack of marine salt from when I was seriously thinking about a brackish mangrove tank. Have some crushed coral to help boost minerals, too.

[Maggie]

Ok, someone on here is going to crack the "nerite snail breeding code", and I'm here for it! It sounds like a long, tedious process - can money be made from it?

[gardenman]

11 minutes ago, Maggie said:

Ok, someone on here is going to crack the "nerite snail breeding code", and I'm here for it! It sounds like a long, tedious process - can money be made from it?

I doubt it. They're very prolific but the time it takes to go from planktonic-sized fry to sellable snails would be a very long time. They are so prolific in the wild that harvesting the wild ones is very inexpensive and they ship easily. The article at aquariumbreeder.com is pretty extensive and contains links to several scientific articles on the breeding and life of nerite snails. Getting them to lay eggs is the easy part. Everything else is hard. 

[Irene]

On 2/12/2021 at 4:46 PM, tolstoy21 said:

@Oded AquaticsI am very interested in taking a crack at breeding these as well.

I researched this a while ago and found a single post online that I can no longer find. Luckily I saved that to a txt file and still have it as a reference, so I am going to repost it here.

I'm currently researching nerite snail breeding methods, and I believe I came across the article you referenced (see first bullet). I also found some other useful links that people may find useful:

• Neritehead method: hatch eggs in full salt water
• DannyDanDaniels method: acclimate adults to and hatch eggs in brackish water
• Research from AquariumBreeder: brackish water steps and cool pictures of nerite snail egg capsule

[tolstoy21]

@Irene Thanks for this reply and added links. There is a thread somewhere on a forum where a biologist/aquarium hobbyist documented some of his success at this. If I can find it, I'll add a link to it in this thread.

My first attempt at this was a disaster due to a short in my Fluval Spec pump that killed off my Nerites! Didn't realize they were getting shocked until I put my hand in to see what was up and (youch!) got a shock myself 'first hand' (pun intended). 

Been meaning to give Nerite breeding another shot but haven't yet found the spare time amongst other breeding projects I have going on. 

Also, [insert shameless fan shout-out here] been a fan of 'Girl Talks Fish' for some time now (stumbled upon your channel when I found your interview with Greg Sage a few years back). Thanks for all the content!

[gardenman]

Nerite snails sell for $2-$3 each locally and given the time and effort it takes to breed them and raise them, and the most a retailer would give you for them (maybe $0.50 each), it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me to try breeding them. It's a heck of a challenge and can be done, but is it worthwhile? Eh, probably not. E-Bay has multiple sellers offering ten for $20-ish with free shipping. You need a freshwater tank to hold the breeding nerites, a full saltwater tank to hatch the eggs and start raising the fry, which are planktonic in size. You need a food source for the fry. Then you need a transition tank to move them from full saltwater to full freshwater. Don't forget, each "egg" that we see is actually an egg capsule containing around seventy eggs. That should give you some idea of how small the fry are at hatching. You need food that's small enough for them to eat and given their size at hatching, that's not easy. You can do it, but is it worth the trouble? Eh, probably not.

[Mbuna Mamma]

So has anyone here had any success?  Would like to hear about failures too, what did you try and didn't work? I REALLY want to breed the red racers.  I think they are one of the most beautiful creations ever.  Plus what if they go extinct in the wild, we need to figure out how to breed these guys in captivity.  I just ordered my first nerites and am anxiously awaiting their arrival.