Question:

Snail eggs?

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I have a 3 gallon aquarium with 3 guppies, 3 neon tetras, 2 orange tetras, a black mystery snail, a gold mystery snail, and a bunch of baby snails. The pet store said they'd give me baby snails for free, so I got about 5 of them. After I got them, I noticed jelly-like sacs on the glass, about the size of this "O" with multiple clear circles in them, with small, greenish dots in them. Are these some kind of eggs? If so, are they from the snails?

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  1. Yes, those jelly sacks are snail eggs.  In anywhere from a few days to a week or two (hatch time depends on temperature and water quality), you will have very tiny baby snails.  Now, I know you mentioned "baby snails" in your question, but I have to tell you that those aren't "baby snails".  Those snails are a different species from your mystery snails.  (Mystery snails are really a type of apple snail).  The "baby snails" you're referring to are a type of generic pond snail, and they will never grow to be as big as your mystery/apple snails are.  In fact, the pond snails are fully grown now.  That's why they're having babies of their own.  

    Pond snails reproduce at a very different speed than apple snails.  Your apple snails will lay a giant egg clutch above the surface of the water, and you can control their reproduction by keeping the water line high and leaving them no room to lay eggs.  Apple snails are also heterosexual, so if you only have one, you will never have babies unless it was pregnant when you got it.  

    But pond snails are different.  They are capable of laying eggs even when there is only one snail in the tank (a type of cloning called parthenogenesis, I think, but don't quote me on that name).  The pond snails lay their eggs wherever they want, on the tank walls, on your live plants, on the filter.  The eggs hatch and have like twenty or so baby snails, which can grow and reproduce very soon.  This often causes population explosions.  You start out with just one or two snails, and then a month later you have a hundred billion million snails everywhere.  To keep your population of pond snails controlled to a sane amount, you might want to use a form of population control.  Some people sell the extra snails back to the pet store, some people just kill them (how mean), and other people have shrimp in the tank.  Shrimp eat snails.  I have ghost shrimp, myself.  Oh, and your guppies will have a population explosion, too, since the females give birth every thirty days.  

    But, yeah, that's the information you needed.  Oh, and your tank is overstocked.  That many fish in that small a tank (three gallons?!  wow) is going to spell calamity very soon.  I recommend you upgrade to ten gallons if you want them all to survive to see the end of the month.


  2. haha how cute a mystery snail
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