Apple Snail Baby?

Question

Eemmm...I thought apple snails needed a "friend" to make babies lol. I've had what I thought was a male snail (but I'm not aquatic expert so could be way off base) I've had the snail for about a year, and when I got him he was already the size of a golfball. Recently a friend gave me a bunch of Java Moss which the snail liked......BIG TIME. (no more java moss lol) I'm pretty sure my friend doesn't have any apple snails in her tank, tho she did have tiny "unicorn" shaped ones (which I have a few of, very tiny). Anyway....you can imagine my surprise when I was cleaning the tank tonight and found a small brown replica of the apple. I couldn't figure out what it was it was so tiny (slightly smaller then a pea) till it started to move and I got a good up close look at it lol.

Soooooooo.....first, can an apple snail have babies without a mate? I didn't think they could. And secondly....is there any special care I need to do for this little fella?

Thanks!

I was wondering about eggs possibly being in the java moss. I found very hard white marble like balls (smaller then a pea) interwoven among the moss.....but I thought these were part of the plant somehow.....maybe bulbs or something....could those have been eggs? (if so I got more babies on the way!!!! lol)

Answer 1

You have Malaysian Trumpet snails (Melanoides tuberculatus)! Enjoy them - they make excellent gravel aerators. You make have to cull them occasionally, because they can breek without the opposite gender - there is actually no recorded male of this species. Contamination of water or plants containing eggs is the best (or worst) way to get smails - I have several pond snails due to contaminated cabomba, but to keep their numbers down, I sink a piece of lettuce down to the gravel in an open mesh bag and turn off the light for the night - in the morning I just pull the bag out and give them to a friend whose loaches love them.

As people have no doubt said already - apple snails reproduce sexually, but they can store sperm for a long time, fertilizing themselves from the mating for a long time.

Baby Trumpet snails will crawl along your aquarium, eating you algae and getting bigger all the time. You can buy bottomfeeder pellets for both your apple snail and the hoard of Trumpet snails you'll no doubt have in a few months. They adore them, and it'll really kick the growth off.

As an aside, apple snails don't usually attack vegetation unless they've nothing else to eat. You might consider sinking pellets or the above mentioned bottomfeeder pellets to help your snail fill up and stop munching on vegetation (:

Answer 2

In apple snails the sexes are separate - that's part of their appeal to people who don't want to be overrun by baby snails, plus any eggs laid are above the water line, so they're easy to remove.

In a way, apple snails are like guppies - the females are capable of storing sperm form a mating and can continue to produce fertile eggs for several months. Maybe your friend got some very small snails if she got the moss (or other aquarium plants) recently, or it may be a different species of snail that resembles the apples, but was introduced as an egg to either tank with plant or fish additions.

Answer 3

Snails reproduce really quickly. The eggs are easy to controll though. You will see the eggs laid above the waterline. If you want them to hatch, sprinkle a few drops of water on them every day. They need moisture to hatch. If you don't want them to hatch, scoop them out and toss them. They won't hatch without water/moisture so you don't have to worry about having snails crawling out of you garbage after a few weeks. You could always take one of the snails out if you really don't want this to happen. Return it if you can. Up to 100 babies can come out of one cluster! I highly don't recomend not letting this happen. It's better to stop it early than letting them hatch and realizing later that you shouldn't have done that. It's very, very hard to get rid of snails once they start reproducing. But really, I guess it's up to you.

Answer 4

Apple snails are monosexual and hold both parts in order to make babies. The is what makes snails such a problem is because they multiply soo fast.

Answer 5

You are correct, they do require both sexes to produce viable eggs. Here's some info on the care and breeding of Apple snails:

http://www.applesnail.net/content/multi_languages/english.htm

Hope that helps

MM