# Breeding nerite snails



## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

I found this on another forum. Guy posted only this once, never again, back in about 2009. Hopefully he won't mind I copied it.. I'm not sure where I actually found it now, I failed to bookmark it, I think. I kind of love the opening sentence, given some of what comes later, but then, I expect English was not his first language and I'm sure he did the best he could.

Where it says ' A sexually', I'm sure he meant asexual, aka no separate sexes in these snails. There are a lot of spelling errors, grammatical errors and other issues with the original post. I did very slightly edit a couple of things for clarity; minor changes where I thought it would help and left the rest as it came.

At the end when he gets to transferring baby snails to fresh water, it is not quite crystal clear to me what he was trying to say.

'I' think he's saying that once the snails are large enough [ have shiny shells ] to transfer them to freshwater, you need to do it very gradually over a month. For one gallon containers, you'd change 10 ml water daily, half in the morning, half at night, until the water is all fresh. Then he says for marine, something about reducing the salt levels.. and I'm not too sure what that means.

If you think he meant something else about those 10 ml water changes, or have some clarity to offer regarding the remarks about reducing salt levels, please tell me what you think he meant !

Quote Breeding Nerite snails

Well I've been breeding Nerites for a while. It seems to be a lot of confusion to a lot of people. Lets start off slow to clear the water from messy breeding details.

Nerites are A sexually. Once eggs are laid they can be transfer to a fully saltwater tank non brackish water I well explain this later.

How do you get your little snails to lay eggs? More they'll eat the more they'll will to lay eggs. 99.9 percent of the time they'll lay eggs on your glass rocks or hard surface. I usually wait about maximum 72 hours before moving the egg. In case my Nerite might want to lay a few more. I've notice my best Nerita are laid on drift wood. I well explain this in a bit and the reason why. It doesn't matter what kind of water you breed them in whether it be fresh salt or brackish. Let me be a little bit more clear about this. What will matter is how you will hatch these eggs. Nerite eggs can take a long time to hatch from a few days to a few weeks. I had a few eggs that hatched a month later. As far as water temperature my hatching is room temp. As cold as a bowl of goldfish water.

Alright time to get down to the good stuff with directions.

1. Pick a item(s) with some good algae mounted to it. Place this item where your Nerite well be. FRESH SALT OR BRACKISH WATER. What temp isn't important. What quality should be at the best possible. I personally like using drift wood. Driftwood has tons of algae for these baby to feed.

2. Wait a few days. Until you see a good amount of eggs on item/decor. These eggs look like little sesame seeds. WARNING DONT TRY TO REMOVE THESE EGGS BY SCRAPPING THEM. You'll pop the shell. Wait about 72 hours to get a nice size decor with eggs on them.

3. Set up a small tank. I'm using a 1 gallon tank to nurse the babies. A air bubble line that is set very low 1 bubble ever 2 seconds. Also a marine/saltwater (freshwater salt wont work). Why salt and no brackish. The reason is once these Nerites are born at this stage they need all the calcium and mineral to develop a health strong shell. Which will increase the level of survival as juveniles.

I had little luck with brackish water. My percentage increased about 80 percent when I've hatched Nerite in fully saltwater tank. I usually fill the saltwater level just enough to cover the decor/driftwood.(this is where you'll place your decor covered with eggs)

4. Usually about every 3 days I well perform a 50 percent water change. Don't want your snail to die from bad water. This is easy to do. Don't be lazy takes less then 5 mins.

5. Once your eggs are hatching. They hatch at a very slow rate. You'll see that they're very small larvae. You can feed them algae that's on your décor or driftwood. If not you can head to your local aquarium or pet shop. And purchase some algae chips.

Chop these algae chips into small fine grains. And drop them in your tank. Feed them by eye. If you don't see any food. Give them food.

6. Once you see a nice shine to the shell on your snail, its time to move them. This process can take weeks. I don't recommend one or 2 days. They'll die on you. Purchase a small measuring device. The measurement I am using is ML.

For my one gallon tank. I would treat about gallon of freshwater(for people out there that don't know what Im talking about treating your water. Neutralizing water from harmful chemicals using(Tetra Aqua Clear (or any other brand).

Simply ever morning take out 10ml of tank water. Replace 5Ml in the morning and 5ML at night. For a full month. This step is only for freshwater tanks. For brackish or salt. Just lower the level of salt until you reach your tanks ppm. For a safe entry.
Enjoy your new NERITES. Usually i breed about 100 a month and sell them to my local pet shop. Unquote.


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## darkangel66n (May 15, 2013)

Thanks for the info. I will be starting the change to brackish soon for these.


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## futurezach (Jun 11, 2012)

Fishfur said:


> I found this on another forum. Guy posted only this once, never again, back in about 2009. Hopefully he won't mind I copied it.. I'm not sure where I actually found it now, I failed to bookmark it, I think. I kind of love the opening sentence, given some of what comes later, but then, I expect English was not his first language and I'm sure he did the best he could.
> 
> Where it says ' A sexually', I'm sure he meant asexual, aka no separate sexes in these snails. There are a lot of spelling errors, grammatical errors and other issues with the original post. I did very slightly edit a couple of things for clarity; minor changes where I thought it would help and left the rest as it came.
> 
> ...


Do you have some to sell now fishfur? I'm looking to buy some


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## LTPGuy (Aug 8, 2012)

futurezach said:


> Do you have some to sell now fishfur? I'm looking to buy some


If Fishfur doesnt' have any, you can try BA Mis'ga. I picked up some Zebra Thorn Snail when they had their special last week, or the one before. I believe they are a different variety of Nerite.

Fishfur, thanks for your post also. I was planning to see if I can breed these beauties, and the information is definitely helpful. Save some time from surfing.


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

You won't find much nerite raising info by net surfing - I'd looked and didn't find much of any use.

I was very lucky to find this info. And sorry, I haven't any to sell. I haven't yet tried to breed them but I have quite a few just now and I have loads of wood pieces they can use to spawn on that I can then take out to hatch, once I get a salt tank going. 

Kind of disappointing that brackish won't do it, as I'd hoped I could hatch them along with raising shrimp zoeys, but it looks like I might need two tanks, one pretty much full salt, the other a bit more brackish. Guess I'll find out when I finally get it set up.


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## LTPGuy (Aug 8, 2012)

I added a pair of zebra thorn nerite each to my 5 tanks and noticed these oblong white "eggs" on the black mess.









Anyone know if these are Nerite Snail eggs? I am going to setup a salt breeding container to see if they will hatch and survive. This could be a dangerous precedent as dabble a little in salt and I might be hook.

These snails were in freshwater, and I thought they don't breed at all in freshwater. The "eggs" are consistent with tanks which have the snails.


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## mistersprinkles (Nov 4, 2013)

Those look like nerite eggs to me. I've had them lay in my FW tanks lots of times. No hatching obviously since it was FW. That's what they look like.


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

Nerite snails lay eggs all the time in fresh water. They just can't hatch in fresh water. As for the adult snails, I really don't know if they can live full time in salt water, but the ones we buy are acclimated to fresh.

In the wild they come from tidal flat areas, and their eggs are laid where they'll be hatching in salt water when the tide comes in. It's one reason they seem to be able to stand long periods of time out of water, much longer than most snails can tolerate. But I have never ever seen them being sold as marine snails, only as fresh water. They may be like mollies.. able to live in salty water, but equally able to live in fresh, but I don't think you'd want to just toss them in salt water.. they'd need to be acclimated slowly if you wanted to try that. Should work, in theory at least, since the babies must have salt water to survive.

Those do look like Nerite eggs on the mesh you have there. Don't try to scrape them off.. you'll pop the shell and kill the embryo. You have to put the item the eggs are on into the salt water eggs and all. You also need to have something for them to eat ready to go when they hatch out.

I have noticed that all the Nerites I have seem to prefer wood for egg laying to any other surfaces. Or maybe it's just easier to see them on wood, perhaps. I do see eggs on rocks too, but I see a lot more on wood pieces. I've heard they'll lay on anything, even the glass, but so far I've never seen them do this in my tanks. 

So if you don't want to pull out that mesh with the moss on it to try hatching those eggs.. try putting in some small pieces of bare wood and see if they'll lay on those, or maybe some some river pebbles. Then you can easily remove these items with eggs on them to try hatching. 

I have a bunch of small wood pieces I was going to use if I ever get a tank set up to try this myself, since the snails obviously aren't going to lay only where you want them to, I figured best idea was to give them a lot of choices, so I could get the most eggs out at a time.


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