apple snail shell damage

[robin]

Question: Some snails get shell damage from mating. The ones with the damage, are they the ones laying the clutches of eggs?

Robin

[jvision]

Mating does usually lead to eggs.

[robin]

are you sure???? lol

What i mean is......only some of the snails get shell damage......could you tell me why? are they the ones on the 'receiving' end of the fertilization???

[BettaFishMommy]

robin, from my experience it is mostly females that get the shell damage, and it occurs on the side of the snail that the male, erm, 'encounters', lol.

have you noticed that it's the bigger snails with the damage? and if the snail is facing you the damage is on your left? usually it's the females that grow larger, at least in my experience with these shellkids, so it's most likely damage from the pressure the male exerts when, erm, you know.... lol.

unless the shell cracks badly or a fissure develops i wouldn't be too worried. just keep feeding the snail jello to give them the calcium they need to grow healthy shells and most of the time the damage should repair itself.

oh, btw, that one jade snail i didn't give you due to the fissure in his shell..... still going strong! and he's now twice as big as when you saw him.

[robin]

thank you....you answered my question. i am just trying to figure out who is laying the clutches!!

robin

[Baos]

Never noticed any shell damage on my apple snails when I had them and they matted like crazy. Almost a clutch a day. It was an apple snail outbreak. Is your alkalinity high enough for them?

[BettaFishMommy]

when you have a larger population then there is less likely to be damage from mating, IMO, since there are more females for the males to mate with. when it is a small popluation such as robin's, there will be more repeated breeding with certain individual snails, which can result in the damage. "too much of a good thing" and all, lol.

i find edmonton water to be great for keeping apple snails, and had two generations in my tanks already before i found out about snail jello. those generations had very little to no damage from breeding or calcium deficiency.

[Wingin' It]

I have a snail with damage to it's right side, i'm pretty sure it was from a 'happy' male snail. I was on another site that was talking about just throwing in calcium tablets instead of making the snello...any thoughts on that BettaFishMommy?? I'm afraid of killing all these lovely snails!

[BettaFishMommy]

toss Tums straight into the tank! it's going to cloud your water something awful but doesn't do any harm. the tropical flavours are proclaimed to be the ones shellkids like best. i would say 1 tum per 15 gallons. i've been known to toss 4 into a 55 gallon, but thats only if i didn't want to see very far into the tank for a day or two.

but making snail jello is a better idea, as ingesting the calcium is better for the snails than just absorbing it through their foot via the tank water.