"Stop me if you've heard this one. A single mystery snail walks into a tank...

[SkarahW]

... takes a turn around the tank then lands at a nice spot by the filter. Asks the aquarist for an aglea - neat and makes themself at home."

In all seriousness though, here's the situation. My golf ball-sized golden mystery snail, Asuma, was about a quarter of the size she is now when I got her has now laid a sizeable clutch of eggs. 

It has been almost 4 months since I purchased my mystery snail from my LFS. I was excited and baffled to find a clutch at the waterline of my 37gal community tank. Keeping in mind Asuma is a solo snail in that tank. So, I frantically started researching; how did this happen, how do they reproduce, etc. I read that mystery snails can hold onto a fertile clutch for months before deciding to lay them and that they could have become fertilelzed in the LFS before I brought her home. 

We decided to let the clutch run its course. I didn't want to risk injuring or loosing the babies, so I decided to leave them be. It wasn't until too late that I saw that you could remove clutches. Now, were at week 3 after discovering the clutch and I have confirmed 7 babies of varying sizes; the smallest the size of quinoa & the biggest a pea.

My plan is to move the babies to a 20 gal I started cycling at the time of discovery. Once they're old enough to be seen and safely removed they will be transported to that tank. 

Couple questions and suggestions needed: 

a) How long until the clutch will be done having hatchlings? 

b) Since I am building this renewed tank around the snails, suggestions on substrate, enviornment and decor and tank mates please?  

c) Shells: Are they squishy or pretty hardened after hatching? 

d) Will "mom" eat them? Will their tank mates eat them? (they are with 6 guppies, 6 corys, and a hillstream loach) 

I welcome any advice or constructive critique. I am new to snails and learning as I go.

I am super stoked on these babies though. 

Baby and Asuma ("mom") 

 Baby Quinoa Sized Feb 26th-ish 

One of the bigger babies, today, approx. pea sized 

[ElTigre]

Funny enough my first tank ever i experienced the same thing. I had a 20 long with guppies and cory cats and they never bothered the golden mystery snail babies i had. I ended up with over 20 that survived and took them back to the lfs. For the clutch you can tell its done hatching when it looks like an empty honeycomb. I just removed as soon as they all hatched since i had more than enough. Honestly in terms of tank set up you could do whatever you want. A planted tank with natural décor would be cool. For tank mates you could do a large school of tetras, danios, or rasboras to supply poop for the plants and snails. One tip id suggest is getting some wonder shells (the co op sells them) to keep the calcium up in the tank, That way with so many snails in the tank you wont have to worry about them running out of calcium for their shells.