scarral
Achatina achatina
Posts: 99
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Post by scarral on Jul 28, 2013 21:35:11 GMT
I have two one year old A. Immaculata. They are called Schnick and Schnack. They are siblings from a batch of eggs in my son's kindergarten that wasn't disposed of because the teacher that takes care of them went on holiday. So we got them last year's summer. Now they are young adults, and have been mating very happily. The very first batch of eggs came in May, and I kept 7 eggs in total, as I decided I'd find them a home if they hatched. Of all the 7 eggs, only three hatched and of those, only one survived. I kind of inofficially called it "Lucky", since it's the only one that survived. Another time they laid eggs I kept 10, of which 8 babies are very happily growing...
Now I've found a home for them, and the time to say goodbye is rapidly approaching, and I keep thinking about keeping Lucky (which would mean adding it to the big tank where Schnick and Schnack live, with the possibility of Lucky mating with Schnick and Schnack next year when it becomes an adult). And this is where your suggestions and thoughts come in. I've grown rather fond of my little creatures, and can imagine having snails after Schnick and Schnack die, and I thought I'd just keep some of the descendants, but then I've also been reading another thread about inbreeding and bringing other non related snails to keep a good gene mixture and so on... But then again, of my two lovely snails, Lucky is the first born and survivour that came out of their "relationship", so it's kind of special... Also, they lay soooo many eggs, that I would find kind of a waste if I ended up freezing all of them (like probably more than 1000 per year, I'd estimate) only to spend money to buy more snails from someone else at some point anyway... What would you do? Would you keep Lucky? Or would you just get another snail(s) from other sources when Schnick and Schnack die?
By the way, the big tank is 60x30x30 cm. would it be enough space to house 3 adult immacs?
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Post by shaydeesnail on Jul 28, 2013 22:16:04 GMT
Haven't got a tape measure to hand to visualise the size of your tank! The petsnails has a tank calculator on it though, I've found it helpful. Personally I do not believe that inbreeding causes half the problems that some people would have you think. Snails naturally live in family groups and inbreed even in the wild, I've read a little about captive inbreeding and it appears to take many many generations before causing any problems, usually slightly smaller size. Inbreeding does however cause significant issues if the siblings have bad genetics, such as shell problems or proneness to diseases. The problem to me is that some bad genes are obvious whereas others are hard to see as they may not become apparent until later in life after the snails have mated. My opinion is that when done responsibly and by someone well informed, the owner should know whether or not the snails are healthy and when it is wise to introduce new genes to the mix. I hope this helps you, these are all just my opinions though and hopefully others will chime in so you have more information to form your own from
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shivles
Achatina achatina
Posts: 90
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Post by shivles on Jul 29, 2013 7:00:59 GMT
I think it's possibly my thread you read about inbreeding? I found the first babies I had we're ok, they grew very well but I let them breed together again and now have 2 snails from that. These snails seem ok but are smaller than the others and so I'm introducing new snails. But I'm also doing it to boost the population of this subspecies of snail as they are unusual. I would freeze any eggs now or sell the babies, keep Lucky if you're quite attached to him and get him a new partner. If I'd known more I'd have only saved one from each generation and introduced a new snail each time. There are different opinions on the inbreeding though, as shaydeesnail says a lot of people believe it doesn't cause that many issues. If you're planning to sell the babies though simply for the health of the general population I wouldn't inbreed too much.
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scarral
Achatina achatina
Posts: 99
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Post by scarral on Aug 2, 2013 18:21:26 GMT
I've been thinking: If I were to keep Lucky and find a new mate for it, would all four be able to live together in the same tank, or would I have to keep both Lucky and friend in a different tank, to make sure Lucky doesn't mate with its parents? Or is it unlikely that two snails with one year age difference will mate?
Thanks for your comments!
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shivles
Achatina achatina
Posts: 90
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Post by shivles on Aug 2, 2013 18:36:27 GMT
Snails will mate with pretty much anything they can lol if you want to avoid inbreeding you'll have to keep them apart.
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scarral
Achatina achatina
Posts: 99
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Post by scarral on Aug 2, 2013 20:57:20 GMT
Mmmmhhh I don't have the space for that... And even if I could find the space in the future, I guess there's no way of knowing whether Lucky has stored sperm from its parents and therefore whether the eggs that are laid after I separated them are "inbred" or not... Mmmmhhhh complicated...
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scarral
Achatina achatina
Posts: 99
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Post by scarral on Aug 4, 2013 14:47:43 GMT
Hi! I've been thinking a lot about this issue, and have come to a kind of compromised conclusion. First, it seems that inbreeding is not something to be avoided at all costs, although gene mixture is if possible a better option. So I think I'll follow shivles comment and keep one snail of each generation and bring one new snail. I'll keep them all in the same tank, dispose of all the eggs that will come until both Schnick and Schnack die, and then keep one new baby from Lucky and Friend when the time comes. I guess it will be impossible to know for sure whether Lucky+Friend's baby is not actually made wih sperm from either Schnick or Schnak that Lucky saved and used to produce eggs after Schick and Schack die (unless I can somehow make sure that Friend laid the eggs and not Lucky, in which case it doesn't matter if these eggs come from Schick or Schnack's sperm because Friend is not directly related to any of the other three), I guess I'll leave that to nature's wisdom and the so callled "sperm lottery" I've read snails do...
I'm not planning to sell snails or become a snail breeder or anything of the sort, but if at some point I find people interested in this species or in snails in general, I wouldn't mind passing some on.
I started yesterday to look online for places to buy or obtain immacs, if possible close to where I live, and it seems that there aren't as many as I thought there were... So I hope my plan half way works out. I don't necessarily need to find a friend for Lucky any time soon, I don't think, since the three of them would be more than enough to keep each other company. But then my question comes, if I plan to get Friend as freshly hatched or small baby, does it matter how old Lucky is for them to end up mating? Or should I do that like within the first couple of years of Lucky's life? Is there some reproductive cycle, whereby after certain age snails don't mate anymore? Or could there be some emotional issues involved, whereby if Lucky is too old, it won't be open anymore to get involved in a new relationship with a "stranger"?
What do you think?
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Post by muddydragon on Aug 5, 2013 10:09:48 GMT
I think that's a fair idea, How old are schnick and schnak? if they're only a year or two they could easily outlive their offspring.
Don't worry about emotional issues, they won't have any i'm sure, i doubt they think like that. They also keep mating until they're ancient, i don't know about the quality of the matings though e.g. if there's DNA damage or incorrect chromosome separation (for example with humans the older the mother the greater the chance of incorrect chromosome separation, hence the greater chance of trisomy of chromosome 21 which leads to downs syndrome)
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