Mystery Snail Keeping
Hello, welcome to my mystery snail care blog! If youre looking to see my personal progress with breeding this type of snail, see my other blog here: https://www.minds.com/lapreptiles/blog/mystery-snail-breeding-progress-tips-personal-experience-1024867680934207488
Enjoy!
So you currently have or are looking for a freshwater aquarium, and you need some critters to occupy it. Here is the mystery snail! Pomacea bridgesii - is a Gastropoda who is extremely popular in the pet hobby. They became this popular because unlike most snails, these arent pests. You can easily set up an aquarium of either gender and they are very friendly and will treat your plants well. Most snails are considered pests because they eat so many plants and reproduce so fast. Mystery snails, Dont reproduce as often (unless you want them to) and if fed well wont eat any leaves but your dead ones. They are very fascinating to look at and will clean your tank very well for you. They come in many sizes and colors, and often have varying patterns.
Diet: Mystery snails, or the common apple snail, feeds mainly on algae in your tank, so you need some algae if there isnt easy to find alternative food in the tank. I currently am feeding mine Top fin Algae Thins, which are tiny wafers that you drop in the tank full of nutrients and algae for your little friends. They averagely grow to about 2-3 inches and live around a year in the wild. You can also feed them bottom feeder pellets and some other things.
Habitat: These snails are originally from Paraguay, Brazil and Bolivia and tend to live in waters with a lot of plant life, high PH (over 7.6) temperatures from 68 to 84 degrees F, and a kH of 12 - 18. Low calcium levels will leave snails shells weak, always add calcium to the water to ensure the levels stay high enough where they can maintain a healthy shell. They do well in any sized tank and as long as you dont have a large community of them theyre also good for micro aquariums. Or you can load up a huge tank with them. As long as their conditions are met! Its best to keep 1-2 snails per 5 gallon tank.
Breeding: Mystery snails will not overpopulate and destroy your aquarium, however if you keep separate genders together, they will eventually mate. They lay up to a couple hundred eggs per clutch, and will only reproduce in high PH waters with a lot of calcium. They always lay their eggs above the water line by a few inches, instead of inside of the water. If you wish to move the clutch to another container, wait around 24 before doing so. Over time the eggs will become more transparent, hatching in a couple weeks. When they do hatch, they will begin moving to the water where they will begin searching for their first meals in the outside world! If you wish to prevent them from breeding, the best way is to try to keep a single gender, (females tend to be much bigger) and keep the waterline high, so there isnt room to lay eggs outside of the enclosure.
You may find this gross, but everything eventually passes away, including snails. When they do, many people in the hobby choose to preserve their shells and keep them or sell them as decor. If youd like to learn more about that, heres an article i didnt create on a method of doing it.
https://www.ehow.com/how_6129888_preserve-shells.html
Thanks for reading up on this blog, I hope the information was helpful or entertaining, and I hope to be releasing more content like this soon. Enjoy the photos and clips of my snails! Until next time!
Just a reminder that this blog is my Snail care guide, and that I have a 2nd blog @
https://www.minds.com/lapreptiles/blog/mystery-snail-breeding-progress-tips-personal-experience-1024867680934207488?referrer=lapreptiles
Dedicated to photography of my own personal breeding & keeping progress. Checkout my channel for more content on these guys! Thanks!