gold/black mystery snails

reds_21

reds_21

AC Members
Feb 4, 2007
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Cincinnati, Ohio
Help anyone

I have a gold mystery snail and a black mystery snail in a 10 gallon tank. recently i did a water change and i am noticing that the gold snail has piggy backed onto the black snail. i cannot tell what they are doing and why. the black snail is coming out of his shell and looks to be trying to get away or move but the weight of the other snail is prohibiting this. i am including a picture of the two but its kinda blurry and can't get a better picture. it doesn't look like they are mating at all. black one is trying to get away. im no snail expert so i can't say they arn't mating cause i don't know what that looks like!!! should i separate the two or what?

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just a little update, i went and looked at them and it looks like the black snail is walking around with the gold still on his back. what is the deal here?
 
2 snails stuck to each other? Sounds like mating.

The mystery snail, if pregnant, will crawl above the water level to lay her eggs on somewhere dry. So just beware, she may crawl out of the tank and get lost on the way back.
 
thank you lazynode,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,if the black snail is trying to move around,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,is it mating? i have been watching them for awhile now and i can't tell of any mating going on. i did go ahead and move them apart. the gold guy is eating lettuce right now and the black snail is hiding in an ornament. you still think they were mating????? i didn't see any "parental advisory" things going on,,,,,,,just an upset black snail!!:D
 
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I haven't seen snails mating. I imagine it would be a bit slow.

But I know one thing, get 2 mystery snails, and you'll have hundreds soon enough. One egg batch could have a hundred babies or more!

And the snail gender does not matter, as I read that they can change their gender. So, if they were 2 males originally, they would have to coin toss to see who has to change to a female so they can reproduce.

I'm curious to see, if they do spawn, what colour the babies will be.
 
They may have been mating. Maybe not. Sometimes they just like to go for rides. Sometimes a male decides to mate and the female doesn't want to but can't get the male off. I have a male and female (and oh so many babies) and sometimes she will shake him off or rub against decor to knock him off her back.

I am not certain if they can change gender or not, I didn't think they could though. Sometimes males will "go through the motions" together.

If you find eggs, then they were mating :p

If you want to be certain not to get baby snails (they're cute at first, but quickly become overwhelming) you should seperate the two. The population is easy to control (if they do end up giving you eggs) as all the eggs are laid together above the water line. All you have to do to prevent babies is remove the eggs and destroy them.

I think you can find the colors these two could produce (and a ton of other info) at applesnail.net
 
Mine do this all the time. It's usually just that one snail has scooted in the way of the other snail and so one ends up crawling over the other. Sometimes they're trying to see if there is food on the shell of the other snail. It's not mating unless you see soft bits of one stuck up inside the shell of the other. In that case, start watching for eggs. There is quite a bit of info on snail mating in the applesnail.net website, in the "discussions" section, which is their forum.
 
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