Snail Updates

December 28th, 2012:

          I hatched a brand new batch of babies. I will be following their progress along with the older babies you saw in the pictures on previous pages on these weekly updates. I hatched an egg sac yesterday, Dec. 27th at around 2:oopm. I took a video. Unfortunately the little snails are so small that it is very hard to see them fall through the water, but you can still see how to gently roll the egg sac in your fingers and let it fall apart and break up to release the little snails. As previously described, I waited until the egg sac was greenish-grey in color, then gently, very gently, broke it into pieces and, first by shaking the loose baby snails out then gently rubbing the remainder out between my finger. The key is to wait long enough. If the egg sac is ready to hatch, it will literally fall apart. The rubbing is just to break up the sac into as small pieces as possible. If any baby snails are left in an egg with the egg shell unbroken, then they will drown. Almost no pressure is needed. Just barely rub your fingers together, just so your barely touching one finger to another. Then the baby snails will break free and drop to the bottom. Don't worry about removing the egg sac. All the pieces will be eaten as you can see in the video.

            Now again, it is hard to see the little baby snails in the video as they fall from the egg sac. I am going to experiment and film several other hatchings and hopefully I can come up with a more clear example to show. For now though, here is the video.                                     

UPDATE!!: There is a new and better quality video on Part: 7. I thought it would be better to put it there since that has the section about hatching babies and egg sacs. Click here to view that page and see the video.

             I am just always amazed at the zeal in which these little guys, from the moment of birth, take to searching for, finding, and devouring food. Immediately after hatching they begin to consume the egg sac, or what ever food they find closest to them. They crawl across the bottom, up the sides of the glass, and all around, eagerly filling their little tummies.

Here you can see all the newborns spread out mere minutes after being hatched.

Here is a little closer shot with a look at some of the colors.

Here the Purple snails are outlined with purple, Blue with blue, Jade with green, and the two with both brown and green are most likely going to be wild color, because they are so much darker in color. Also one little white one. There are two newborns outlined in light purple. They may or may not turn out to be purple, their shells show a slight purplish tint, but it won't be very clear for a few more days.

            In the above picture I can only guess at the Jade or Wild colors. The two I am suspecting might be wild color, started off just like all the little green ones I circled. Jade and Wild color babies looked identical until later on.

This little baby has no black dots, no coloring to its shell, no hint at color at all. Except it has a little black eye. This means the foot is going to be blue and since the shell is white or clear, then it is going to be a little blue snail. Sometimes dark footed babies don't have dots. Not sure why.

          Notice in above picture, all the whitish pink pieces of egg sac and all the little babies, and a few older ones, getting busy eating it up. Below are little babies less then five minutes after hatching already making their way up the sides of the tank. (click to enlarge)

Tiny little newborn, making its way up
to the older purples.

Several newborns with an older purple baby.

Several older babies, including a white footed
gold on far left with a teeny tiny newborn on bottom.

            Remember all of the above pictures were taken within minutes of hatching. You might not think it, but these little guys move fast. Below are pictures of the feeding frenzy that ensued right after the hatching. Both the older snails and the newly hatched babies formed mobs as they fed on the remainder of the egg sac.

           The next three pictures below were taken today, Friday December 28th, just one day after hatching and as you can see they cleaned up the egg sac quite a bit for such a short period of time. Now they form feeding mobs over the large pieces.

Tried to enhanced the color on this one. Not sure if it worked.

Nice close up of large Blue baby on left and two masses of newborns feeding, along with an older purple baby in the mob to the right.

           Immediately after hatching I also took a couple of videos. I sped them up x4 speed so that you can see just how active these little guys actually are. The first video was taken within seconds of hatching and all the videos span over the course of about five minutes. After which I took most of the above photos.

          You can see by the videos how quickly these guys get to it. Even the tiny new babies zoom off! I waited more than a day before feeding them again. Most of the egg sac was eaten and a lot of babies were crawling around in search of more food. I have this water much cooler than my previous tank. I have to say that although it is torture for me with their slow growth rate compared in the warmer water, I have notice more vibrant colors. Although before I only had wild color and jade babies, but still, their shells, feet, even the little red dots on their skin seem to pop more than my first batches. I will continue documenting their growth. I can't wait to see what colors come out of this new batch. Most appeared yellowish green which usually mean Jade or Wild colors, but there were several that looked blue and maybe some purple too. Make sure you come back next week and see how they are turning out!

April, 2013

           So it has been a long several months.  Sorry. I came down with the shingles and was out of commission for a while. Unfortunately when you are suffering through a bout of shingles it is nearly impossible to keep up on cleaning and regular care and maintenance of 3 tanks, one of which is a 55 gallon. So I lost nearly half my stock of snails and fish. The fish took it a lot harder than the snails. Fortunately I was able have family help me transfer/change my fish from their overly dirty tanks. Still a month without vacuuming and water changes took its toll. I still came out with several hundred snails and even have had several of my fish reproduce healthy offspring. Now here I am back on track. 

           I thought I would post a few pictures and give a little update on all those babies you saw hatch. You remember those tantalizing little babies that looked like they might turn out to be purple? Well as it turned out a LOT of them were. At present I have dozens of purples along with blue, striped jade, jade, wild color, and a couple of other interesting mixes and mysterious shell colors.

Here you can see a blue, jade, a very interesting striped (perhaps wild color?) and a purple!

            All that you see above are the survivors during my two months of incapacitation due to the shingles. A lot of strong and healthy guys! And below are some new babies! Born over the last month or two.

           Within the above picture are a lot of the same colors that you saw in the larger snails from the previous batches. I am keeping mostly purple along with a few of each of the following colors, blue, gold, wild color, and jade. I plan on separating the purples and trying to breed a more pure and striking purple line. That is going to have to wait a few months as I plan on making a rather large move soon. Once I am settled in a new place (with a few more added tanks too), I will continue a more selective breeding regimen for these guys. In the meantime I am going to try taking a few more pictures. It is very hard to get good pictures of the purple as the purple color doesn't show up well on pictures or video, they just look brown.

            I hope you enjoyed the new update and again if anyone has any questions or comments please by all means drop me a line!