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DaveSamsell
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Am new to breeding Mystery Snails.  

Does anyone have a preference on leaving the egg "clutch" inside the aquarium, or is it better to remove it & build an incubator?

The humidity level should be fine where the eggs are, but was wondering what the best method might be, from your personal experiences.

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In my experience, either way works fine. I think you should try both methods at least once, just to see what you prefer. I still use both. If the clutches are laid in my El Silverado Endler tank where I raise the babies anyway, I let them hatch on their own. If the Blues in my 55 gallon lay clutches where fish will end up eating baby snails, I remove them and float them in the 40 breeder, move them to a breeder net when they are ready to hatch, and let them crawl out on their own when they are ready. 

 

20200906_131336.jpg

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@Lynze, After some thought, I wasn't totally satisfied 😌 with the location of my Mystery Snail eggs in the aquarium, so I moved them.

Took a few minutes to build a DIY incubator\hatchery, complete with regulated heat & internal supplied humidity.

Kind of fun checking on the progress of the eggs, daily.    🐌🐌🐌

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You'll enjoy seeing the cute little snails gliding around the tank too! Also, if you have a skittle mix of colors and a random one has a clutch it's fun to see what colors you're going to get out of it. I've still got handfuls deciding to leave the breeder net every day, I'll probably pick the rest out at the end of the week and remove the net before the others decide to start crawling back in. Good luck with your baby snails!

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I believe humidity to be the key. If you have a tight fitting lid then there isn't a lot of need to move them. I have heard of them drying out if there is a lot of air flow. I also have had some experience with clutches hatching against the glass and inside the clutch but not on the outside which I believe to be a humidity problem.

 

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Personally I prefer to leave them as is if I dont think they will fall off (this has been a problem when they lay on the plastic lid.) I have das issues with floating hatcheries because inevitably the big adult snails will crawl up onto it and tip it over, causing the eggs to drown. They tend to dry out for me if I put them in a container outside of the tank (even when I wet paper towels, etc.) so for me I try to leave 'em... Which is also easiest.  😉

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Mine aren't as pink as the ones here and the ones I've seen in videos (they are much more pale in person).  It's been about 10 days now and no activity yet.  I'm not sure mine are fertilized.  This is a clutch on a AC70, for size reference.  I have them floating in a container with holes in the top and a damp and dry paper towel inside, like Rachael O'Leary suggests.

PXL_20200903_225218572 (1).jpg

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  • 4 weeks later...

 I floated a clutch in a tupperware container just below the lid in the QT, now baby snail, tank. I sprinkled a little water in every couple of days, not really knowing what would happen and they hatched!  I was not adequately prepared for the number of tiny snails that hatched there must be at least 100! 🤪

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11 minutes ago, Lynze said:

@DaveSamsell How did your baby mysteries turn out? 

@Lynze, Very well, thank you.  Had a number of egg clutches in my 55 gallon.   Some I left where they were placed; but most were moved to my DIY incubator.  Actually, have too many Mystery snails right now, lol.  Will have to contact my local LFS and see if they would like a snail donation.  😊

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2 minutes ago, DaveSamsell said:

@Lynze, Very well, thank you.  Had a number of egg clutches in my 55 gallon.   Some I left where they were placed; but most were moved to my DIY incubator.  Actually, have too many Mystery snails right now, lol.  Will have to contact my local LFS and see if they would like a snail donation.  😊

We had the same issue with too many clutches.  I took the male out of the aquarium after about 6 or 7 clutches.  I put some of the clutches in a container in our QT tank that already has a ton of pond snails in it already.  The other clutches were laid under the output of the Aquaclear, so I left those there, to see what will happen.  Honestly, I have no idea if any have hatched or not, it's been about a month when we rubbed our first two clutches in the QT.  We gave one clutch away and we have about another 3 or 4 clutches still on the filter.  Actually, one of the clutches fell in the off of the filter and into the tank.

So, we don't know if we have any mystery snails or not. @DaveSamsell, how long did it take for the snails to grow large enough to tell they were mystery snails, as opposed to pond snails?

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2 minutes ago, RyanR said:

We had the same issue with too many clutches.  I took the male out of the aquarium after about 6 or 7 clutches.  I put some of the clutches in a container in our QT tank that already has a ton of pond snails in it already.  The other clutches were laid under the output of the Aquaclear, so I left those there, to see what will happen.  Honestly, I have no idea if any have hatched or not, it's been about a month when we rubbed our first two clutches in the QT.  We gave one clutch away and we have about another 3 or 4 clutches still on the filter.  Actually, one of the clutches fell in the off of the filter and into the tank.

So, we don't know if we have any mystery snails or not. @DaveSamsell, how long did it take for the snails to grow large enough to tell they were mystery snails, as opposed to pond snails?

@RyanR, For my eyes to tell, about 2 weeks, LOL.  

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