Big questions about black mystery snail?

Question

My husband brought my kids a black mystery snail and a goldfish...goldfish died quickly...black mystery snail doing very well...last week it began laying eggs...now have four egg clusters in the tank...how can this be? we've had the snail for about a month...it is the only thing in the tank...I can only seem to find info about apple snails and egg laying habits...I don't know if mystery snails need a mate to reproduce....if so, guess this happened at the pet store...if this a female and there is no male present to fertilize eggs, I'm guessing the eggs will not hatch (?)...or can the mystery snail "mate" with itself? and help would be great...I really like the snail, very active and very cute...but not up for hundreds of little snails...as you can see, I don't really know a lot about marine life and again any advice would be great.

Answer 1

Hi there,

Snails, like all Mollusks, are hermaphrodites, and therefore are both male and female.  When mating with each other, they insert a p***s-like organ into the other, and a packet, called a spermataphore, is passed into the other one.  Believe it or not, this all happens at the "neck", not at the rear like the higher evolved animals.

After mating, each snail has the ability to wait as long as they please until they feel the conditions are right to lay their eggs.  Then they will allow the sperm within them to contact the eggs.

This all means, of course, that your snail had mated before, and now your tank is just right and appealing to it and therefore "walla" eggs.  You can rest assured that the eggs are viable and will hatch.  If you do NOT want more snails, then I suggest that you either contact the pet store and ask if they'd like to buy some babies, or just destroy the ones you don't want, or give them away.  It would not be wise to turn them loose in the wild.  It could greatly upset the natural balance.