Breeding Cerith Snails

[Justin James]

Well as we all know Cerith snails breed like crazy but I can't say i've ever seen the hatched babies. I think they usually get eaten or perhaps they have a bad survival rate but I have had 5 clutches laid on inside panes of my tank latley and they have all hatched. Today I just noticed hundreds of little white specs all over the tank. After further examination with a magnifying glass I realized they are baby Cerith snails. Well I guess time will tell if they get to be any size or not. Here is a photo of a few of them. The larger white spots are the snails. The smaller ones are just dust. The pictures were taken with a Magnifying glass infront of the camera.

[Justin James]

Anyone ever heard of successfull raising of the young, or any tips?

[BrianPlankis]

Originally posted by Justin James
Anyone ever heard of successfull raising of the young, or any tips?

It depends upon which species of Cerith you are talking about. The ones that lay the squiggly egg masses on the glass rarely if ever are successful in being raised (without labor intensive assistance).

There are some other species of Cerith snails that lay a different kind of egg mass that are quite successful at reproducing in our tanks if there are no predators of the egg masses.

You can click on my little red house to find out more information about Project DIBS, a group of people attempting to research breeding marine invertebrates (including Ceriths).

Brian