A Trip into Snail Breeding - Nerites & Rabbits

[Northerly]

Very interesting to read! Best of luck to you, and hey maybe I'll buy a few rabbit snails off you if you decide to go that route!

[KevinVA]

Thanks Northerly, I appreciate that. =]

Tried posting this last night (which is why there's a test post above), but my connection to the forum wasn't working out for some reason. Anyway... on to it!

A little update. The reason why I haven't had much to talk about, lately, is because I decided to fishless cycle these tanks. Would it have been easier to just utilize other filter media from another tank? Yep, probably... Perhaps even easier to just add these filters to another tank and have them cycle in there? Again, probably...

But what's the fun in that?!

(Part 1 - Going to try to post in two parts, being that I'm having difficulties for some reason)

[KevinVA]

(Part 2)

Anyway, I just started fishless cycling about a week ago, and I just had some Nitrite readings tonight, so I'm well on my way to having a cycled tank. I must say... 10gals are much faster to cycle. It took me a good while to get a Nitrite reading in my 75gal. I imagine it'll take another week to finish cycling. Then I'll either scrape off all of the Horned Nerite eggs in my 10gal Betta tank and see if they hatch in the Nerite tank, or purchase Zebra Nerites and begin breeding those from scratch, and purchase Orange or Yellow Rabbit Snails to begin breeding them.

I received the majority of my plants for these tanks a few days ago and added them, in addition to the heaters/filters. Also, the substrate has now settled and it looks quite nice in there. =]

This is the Nerite Tank (which will be brackish - with brackish friendly plants):


This is the Rabbit Snail Tank:


Hopefully I'll have more updates in the coming days, but we'll see.

[jeffs99dime]

That's awesome. How long are you going to run the lights on these tanks?

[Taurus]

You're going to do WHAT to a snail? Oh Kevin, that's just wrong.

[KevinVA]

Cross-breeding is the wave of the future? No?

Thanks Jeff. =] Right now they're going 8hrs. They're hooked up to the same timer as my 10gal Betta tank. I'd like to get some algae growing in there, though, but I assume I can accomplish that by merely introducing it from one of my other infested tanks. lol

It's funny, I bet these two would remain algae free, now that I know what I'm doing (arguably), when it comes to planted tanks.

[Taurus]

Cross-breeding is the wave of the future? No?

If you say so, then it must be true!

[Sandz]

This is interesting!

And just for kicks, why not throw the snail eggs in the tank? if they will do nothing otherwise, why not try it. THere is only possitives to come!

[KevinVA]

Sandz, you make a good point. I might as well. Win-win, either way. The Horned Nerites are pretty popular and do a good job of algae cleaning, too. They're just some of the smaller Nerites available. I'm pretty sure that's why my assassins made them a lunch in my 75gal.

[Sandz]

I would love to see them when time comes. Inverts are a fun group of animals to keep.