Tank Bred Cepaea - Trade or Sell for Breeding?

[graemepryce]

Hi all, I was wondering if you could tell me what you thought of an idea I had. I have kept Cepaea's for ages now and the colony is getting pretty large!

Seeing the interest on here and some of the compliments I have had I have been wondering if it wouldn't be a little cheeky to offer some of the best ones for sale on here and Ebay and to offer any unusual morphs for trade with fellow snail-keepers!

Cepaea are one of the most diverse and beautiful species available in the world in my opinion and there are no restrictions about posting them to most EU countries, they aren't a pest species. They do extremely well in a tank and the captive bred ones tend to have much clearer colours and be very active - the picture is of my prize specimen, he's definitely not for sale, but there are many like him which I would be happy to see go to a good home.

I have proved through trial ( and thankfully no error ) that they are quite happy to be in with GALS and as they have never lived on anything other than Coir, washed vegetables, dog biscuits and cuttlefish I can GUARANTEE no snail mites.

I was thinking about £2.50 for a set of three and I will group them into colours, ie - 3 yellow unbanded or 3 rose single banded etc. I would always try to make the postage as low as possible.

Is this a daft idea or is it worth seeing if there is any interest?

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[tsrebel]

I would be interested. I have some home bred here as well (just youngsters so far, so I'm not sure about the colours yet) and would be interested in a trade.

[graemepryce]

Its just occured to me that the picture in my post is my fave guy but he actually wasn't tank bred, I just used that picture as an example of how pretty and colorful these little guys are. The picture attached to this post is of some Yellow unbanded C. Horts that I hatched about 12 months ago, so they have around 2 years of breeding and munching and looking cool before they are geriatrics!

Ps. on the occasions I do pick up a little chap outside it is just to add to the gene pool and I always isolate them for at least a fortnight to break the life cycle of any mites or parasites and ensure no little critters are present in poop.

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[graemepryce]

tsrebel - cool, thanks for the reply. Maybe take a picture of the ones you think would be interesting as soon as the colours start to show? If your babies have clear shells by the time they are about the size of a pea it is likely they are going to be yellow unbanded like above. Strangely enough they seem to be really common if tank bred but less so in the wild. Maybe something in the wild governs what coour they grow? Wish I could work out exactly what it was!

[tsrebel]

It may be that the yellow ones are easier to spot for predators? The yellow unbanded C. hortensis are very common here in Norway. The ones I'm breeding are C. nemoralis rosea, one-banded and un-banded. The youngsters I have are looking more and more like rosea unbanded, but I'm not absolutely sure yet.

[tsrebel]

My oldest C. nemoralis offspring:

[graemepryce]

Yeah he looks like he will be a rose morph of some sort! Rose unbanded are the holy grail of snailkeeping where I am! I found one years ago but it was already old and had a shell repair where a bird had tried to eat it and it had survived! It never laid any eggs though.

I have a very unusual 6 banded rose morph that I am hoping will produce some rose bandless if it breeds with the C.Nem yellow 1-band I have.

Have you noticed that you can breed two unbanded specimens and still end up with a whole brood of multi-bands! Hmmph!

[tsrebel]

It seems the opposite are the thing here; I've had one rosea unbanded crossed with one rosea (or maybe castanea) 1 or 2 banded and none of the babies have any bands (so far).
This is the brightest rosea I ever had (and still have, adult now, old picture):

Right now, I have only two adults, but there were more, so the oldest offspring may not be the related to the two adults.