# my snail had babies...with itself...



## nograce (Jun 5, 2005)

i'm pretty confused right now. about two weeks ago, my snail, who i thought was dead because s/he hadn't moved in a week, had baby snails crawling out of him/her. There were 20 or 30 of them. The mommy/daddy snail is now dead, and there are at last count, 8-10 baby snails roaming around. they vary in size, some are almost as big as my pink fingernail, and some are 2 millimeters long. I've been afraid to do a full out cleaing of the tank ( pebbles removed and all) because it might kill the snaillings. i had no idea snails could have babies on their own. 
we used to own 2 snails, (in december) but they laid eggs so we gave one to a friend and got rid of the eggs. could more eggs have incubated inside the remaining snail for so long? i don't mind that we have little snails now, i just want to know how they got here in the first place.


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## mousey (Jan 1, 2004)

some snails are hermaphrodidic-- they can reproduce alone.


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## fhqwhgads (Jan 18, 2005)

asexual reproduction! where would we be without it. still here because we dont reproduce with ourselves


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## cich (Aug 5, 2003)

mousey said:


> some snails are hermaphrodidic-- they can reproduce alone.


hermaphrodidic means that they have both sex organs. Yes, many snails are indeed hermaphrodites, but they still need two to reproduce. Just that any snail can breed with any snail since there is no gender involved.


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## rain- (Mar 29, 2004)

In fact, they can. Some species can fertilize themselves in rare occassions, but it really is rare. And then there's always Viviparids who actually give birth to live babies (well, the eggs hatch inside the mommy) and MTS who are mostly all females and don't need any fertilization (parthenogenetic) and also give birth to live babies. 

And well, if the snails in question are apple snails, the females can store sperm for months. Although the eggs need to be laid above the surface because they won't be able to develop underwater. 

So, first of all we need to find out your snails species and the the baby snails species. Usually the baby snails turn out to be pest snails, which came with live plants or something else and just showed up one day, when the mother is suspected to be an apple snail and there weren't any eggs for the babies to come from. If you have pictures of the baby snails and the dead one, they sure would help. But if not, check this: Determination quide. 

Apple snail:









Physa acuta:


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## cich (Aug 5, 2003)

Sorry for sounding like I was saying it wasn't possible, because I'm sure it is. All I'm trying to say is that hermaphrodite doesn't mean they don't need a mate, just that they have both sets of organs.


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## nograce (Jun 5, 2005)

the baby snails are still pretty tiny, so i can't tell for sure exactly what they look like. I bought the snail at a Little Critters pet store, and i know it's not an apple snail. (didn't look like that) it started out as a dark greenish brown color, and eventually became a yellowish gold. The parent snail had a rounded shell, but the babies have more of a spiral shell than anything else. The snail was labelled as "golden snail" in the pet store, but that's really all I have. Thanks everybody for helping out.


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## bellrose (Aug 15, 2011)

*same*

This has just happen to me as well!!!!
we are not sure if it came from our snail or the plant!!!!
our snail has not moved for the week and i thought s/he was dead but isnt and then last night we found 4 baby snails!!!
i have taken some photos of them and my big snail and hoping someone can please help us out and tell us what we should do!!!!! thanks heaps


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## wendyjo (Feb 20, 2009)

^ The big snail is a ramshorn and the small ones are pond snails. They are considered pest snails for the most part and will reproduce quite fast.


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## wendyjo (Feb 20, 2009)

nograce said:


> i'm pretty confused right now. about two weeks ago, my snail, who i thought was dead because s/he hadn't moved in a week, had baby snails crawling out of him/her. There were 20 or 30 of them. The mommy/daddy snail is now dead, and there are at last count, 8-10 baby snails roaming around. they vary in size, some are almost as big as my pink fingernail, and some are 2 millimeters long. I've been afraid to do a full out cleaing of the tank ( pebbles removed and all) because it might kill the snaillings. i had no idea snails could have babies on their own.
> we used to own 2 snails, (in december) but they laid eggs so we gave one to a friend and got rid of the eggs. could more eggs have incubated inside the remaining snail for so long? i don't mind that we have little snails now, i just want to know how they got here in the first place.


Most snails lay eggs and are not livebearers, and if your snail laid eggs previously then it would not suddenly turn into a livebearer. 

What you saw were other snails crawling around on the dead one eating it, not being given birth too. They could have come in on plants or in substrate. If you had pics we could help you identify them.


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## bellrose (Aug 15, 2011)

*Crap*



wendyjo said:


> ^ The big snail is a ramshorn and the small ones are pond snails. They are considered pest snails for the most part and will reproduce quite fast.


 
Thank u very much.roud:
so should i kill them and get them out??
do u think they could have come from the plant we have in there? as now the plant is dead and now have baby snails
Thank u very much once againroud:


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## wendyjo (Feb 20, 2009)

You can kill them but chances are there are more of them and/or they have already laid eggs. Pest snails are kind of like roaches - you can kill the ones you see but there are more hiding. But yes, I would squish them. Most pest snails come in on plants that people purchase.


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## SlammedDC2 (Jun 4, 2011)

Could you not put some clown loaches in to clean up the snails?


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## jasonpatterson (Apr 15, 2011)

Unless you have a ton of them or you personally don't like them, snails aren't really a problem. If you overfeed the other tank inhabitants they can get out of control, but if you don't, they generally don't. 

The snails could have come in with virtually anything you put in there that was previously in a fish tank. I've found blobs of snail eggs floating around in the bag with new fish and snails crawling about on the inside of those bags as well. That said, they almost certainly hitched a ride in with your plant and also almost certainly had nothing to do with its death. Pond snails don't eat live plants. Some species of ramshorn do (Columbian ramshorns maybe, can't recall??)

As far as reproduction goes, snails are a very old and diverse group of animals, and they have a variety of reproductive strategies, ranging from single sex organisms that require sexual reproduction to snails that reproduce parthenogenetically (eggs develop without any fertilization at all.) In the case of many freshwater snails, the animals are hermaphrodites, though as was noted, this does not necessarily mean that they can self-fertilize. In the case of pond snails, however, a single animal is capable both of breeding with another and of self fertilizing.


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## Kmoorebaltimore (Apr 12, 2015)

This just happened to me!! I found a teeny snail in my organic Concord grapes in September. I've kept him/her since. A couple of weeks ago he stopped moving and eating. Today I picked him up and there were baby snails inside of his shell. Freaky!! I've kept him in his own habitat since I found him.


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