# Keeping different colour ramshorns together



## FONE (May 21, 2013)

Hey guys,

When I first started the hobby earlier this summer, I got a bunch of plants from different people, and they came with different types/colours of snails, mostly ramshorns.

I pulled them out and put them into a separate container with aeration, and random veggie discards. They keep laying eggs, and there are little tiny snails in the container now.

My question is if it is okay to keep the different colour morphs together. Will the babies rain just the color of the parent, or are there two parents and they might mix?

Currently in the container are:
* brown ramshorns
* leopard spotted ramshorns
* red [orange-y] ramshorns

I'm going to get a few blue ones coming up, and was wondering if it makes more sense to separate them.

Thanks!


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

If you keep blues with reds or leopard spotted, or any of those colours with the dull brown wild colour, most of the babies, if not all, will turn out wild colour, because it's dominant over the other colours.

If you want the colour strains to continue, keep the colours separate. 

Unlike mystery snails or rabbit snails, ramshorns are hermaphrodites. Each has both sets of organs, so they can produce kids by themselves and if so, they will be the same colour as the single parent. 

But they prefer to breed with other snails, and that's where the colours tend to vanish. It's a survival advantage for the snails to get fresh genetic material from another snail, so the only practical way to keep the more desirable colours going is to separate them completely from one another.


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