Here is a photo of one of my snail babies, laying her own clutch of eggs. This little girl is less than 3 months old, and already she’s on her way to being a momma.

This was supposed to be impossible; I’ve read that they don’t start laying eggs till they’re at least 5 months old. Appearantly, this snail doesn’t know how to read.

BTW that white crud on her shell and to the right of her, is the remains of an older clutch that I hadn’t got around to cleaning off. This was always Shelly’s favorite egg-laying corner. Like mother, like daughter I guess.

After some procrastination and mixed emotions, I finally went and re-homed a bunch of my baby snails. The local fish store (LFS) had said they’d take them if they were bigger than nickle-sized. So I made a handy plastic jig with a 20mm slot in it, and any snail who couldn’t fit through the slot was big enough.

It took about an hour, rooting around the big tank almost up to my shoulders, trying to find and scoop out all the snailies who seemed big enough. Then test them with the jig, then separate out the ones who were going to the LFS from the ones I was keeping.

Read more »

About a month ago, my little zebra danio graduated from the nursery tank and moved into the big fish tank with all the grownup fish. It had taken him about 4 months to reach 1-inch long, with most of that time spent in various small tanks and containers, before he went into the magic nursery.

Today, my two baby peppered corydora catfish (Corydoras paleatus) had their own graduation day, moving out of the magic nursery and into the big 38-gallon tank where their parents live. It took these two only about 6 or 7 weeks to reach the 1-inch length.

Here’s one of the young corydoras, exploring the new big tank. Before releasing them into the big tank, they spent some time floating in a cup at the top of the tank, to get accustomed to the new temperature. You can see the two of them, along with a baby snail stowaway:

I’ve started to believe my nursery tank is magic. In the last 3 weeks, almost everything that’s gone in there has thrived and grown. On December 13th there was Les the zebra danio, one or two baby corydora catfish who weren’t particularily doing well, and a handful of baby apple snails who were also just sort of hanging on. Oh and a little dying plant that consisted of one stem and a few suffering leaves.

Then I changed the substrate from chunky gravel to fine sand. In doing so, I believe I lost the corydora fry because they were hiding in the black gravel so I couldn’t separate them from it. Before removing the gravel, I had taken Les, the plant, and the handful of apple snails and put them in a cup, to spare them the trauma of the substrate change.

All that was December 13th. Since then, I’ve added two egg-clutches worth of baby apple snails, tossed in a dozen or so corydora eggs, and generally just hoped for the best.

Since then, the plant has gone absolutely nuts – the dying bit did die off but before that, it shot off a bunch of shoots and now it’s bigger than it’s ever been, ever! There are two corydora fry that are both over a half inch long – cute little goofs always snarfling about the sand, or relaxing amid the zillion baby snails who keep growing and eating and growing.

In the lower right corner, under the heater, there was an algae wafer there yesterday. The babies pounced it and destroyed it, now they’re going after the vacation feeder block.

You can see some of the babies are a magnitude smaller than others – they are from two clutches, about a week apart. The bigger ones are 16 days old in this pic, the smaller ones about 7 or 8 days. Lots of golds, and the rest are ivory. It’s freaky but with their light shells and light bodies, you can see their little hearts beating when they’re travelling right-to-left. All just a little mess of wee feet and tentacles. Very cute.

Bigger than a pepper kernel, smaller than a pea. It’s a baby apple snail, hatched a fortnight ago.

It’s been a few days since the snail babies all hatched out into the aquarium. While it seemed like a good idea at the time, releasing them into the ‘wild’ of my 38gal tank, I quickly recognized the downside to this…

They’re all gone! I mean, they’re so small, they instantly vanished into the substrate and decor, and I might not see them again for weeks, when they’ve grown. Assuming they live that long.

I think the next clutch will be hatched into a breeder net, so I can keep an eye on them. Not that they need my help in any particular way, I’m just nosey and want to watch them.

Anyhow this morning I was scanning the gravel and spotted two babies. They’re still so tiny and as luck would have it, they’re almost exactly the right colour to blend in with the gravel. Even after I spotted them, it took a few minutes of watching – are they tiny bits of gravel? Are they moving?

Yeah, they are moving! So small though that getting photos is next to impossible. Here’s the best I could get.

(By the way, incase it wasn’t clear, there’s only one baby in this pic – I couldn’t get a shot of the other one. After rereading the text I realized it might have seemed that I meant there were two babies in one pic.)