Overachiever mystery snails

Snails have always fascinated me. I remember when I was young we had a big tank with lots of fish, and a few snails. I always noticed they'd climb the air hose and get into the filter. One time when we cleaned it they had laid eggs in it. We flushed them tho.

Thinking about it, I do have a 50 gallon tank and stand sitting in my barn collecting dust. How much work are snails? I know having multiple fish is more work than I want to deal with.

And my mystery snails have already had a set of babies, and Carol (the female) has laid two more clutches in the last couple of days. Not all the eggs are viable -- I have one blob on the tank wall that's done nothing, so I'm going to take it away this weekend. I'm going to leave the two new blobs and see if they seem to be developing. The babies are TINY, no bigger than the point of a Bic pen.

Ramshorns have about 20 in a typical batch, and the mystery snails probably had twice that, but they don't all survive. I'm guessing, based on observation of both kinds, that about a fourth live long enough to grow up. Maybe. We had a water issue in the mystery snails' tank that they share with my betta yesterday -- the water was murky when I got home and I'd only just done a water change the night before. So I did another water change and I try not to suck up babies in the siphon but they're so tiny I'm sure I did. The water looks better today but still isn't as clear as I'd like. I think I know what did it. A friend made "snello" (a frozen batch of crushed up veggies) and gave me some and I put two cubes in instead of the one I normally put in. I don't want the baby snails to be hungry, and the bigger snails seem to be getting all the food. I think two was too many and the second one gunked up the water because it didn't get eaten fast enough. So ... only one cube after this.

Carol has laid three egg pods in the last week and one of the two original pods never hatched, so I'm just leaving these. Two are side by side like twins. That's clearly her favorite spot, because the one that hatched was in that spot, too. I tried to count babies the other night and I think we have about a dozen, maybe a few more that I missed seeing due to their size. I was worried that she'd overpopulate the tank, but they're so tiny and have to be pretty tough to survive among the rams and their parents, so I'm betting we won't have that problem, any more than we have that problem with the rams. They self-regulate, too. We'll just wait and see how many grow up. If it gets overwhelming, the friend who gave me Mike and Carol has a whole room full of tanks (and snails who are probably enthusiastically propagating, too). The guppies have given up having babies, so when the remaining ones are all gone, I may just have a snail tank. Bobby the betta is still very healthy and lively, and he's sharing with the mystery snails and a few rams I haven't managed to catch and move out yet.

Unfortunately, I think Carol has called it a day. One pod never hatched and finally fell off so I threw it out. Another pod is not hatching and is drying out. And Carol herself is withdrawn into her shell and hasn't moved for a couple of days. She's not dead, but she may be dying. I can't imagine what's wrong; she was more than fine until the last week. The babies are so tiny and don't seem to be growing very fast, and never having had baby mystery snails before, I'm not sure how fast they should grow, anyway.

I haven't seen Bobby eating any or even bothering them after the first day. He was curious about them at first and bumped them with his nose a few times figuring out what they were doing in HIS new tank, but since then, he ignores them. He gets fed twice a day, though. And he has a giant crop of ramshorns besides the mystery snails, so he might be eating some of them if he's eating snails.

She has been in her shell all week but I've checked several times and she doesn't smell -- dead snails SMELL incredibly -- and this morning her head was sticking out just a wee bit, so yes, so far she's just doing a Hollywood Diva ("I'll be in my dressing room!!!!") and isn't dead. Mike is oozing around as usual and when he comes near her, oozes right over her as if she were a hill. He doesn't seem bothered.