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Post by lorisarvendu on Apr 20, 2016 7:10:47 GMT
Well blow me down with a feather. I'd always thought Tiger snails breeding in captivity was pretty rare, but 3 and a half years after they arrive from eBay, Franklin & Bonaparte, have finally done the dirty. Here is Bonaparte flooding the corner of the tank with eggs. I really didn't expect this, so I'm going to have to bone up on how to take care of baby Tigers (if the eggs are even viable). Anyone in the Derbyshire area of the UK want a free baby Tiger snail?  Shouldn't be a bad brood, as Franklin and Bony were bought separately and so aren't related.  |
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Post by picklepies on Apr 20, 2016 9:28:22 GMT
Would you be willing to post the babies to the South if I pay for the postage/packaging etc?  Also love the names, gorgeous colours! |
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Post by lorisarvendu on Apr 20, 2016 10:42:21 GMT
Would you be willing to post the babies to the South if I pay for the postage/packaging etc? Also love the names, gorgeous colours! Hi there. Yes I wouldn't have a problem with that. I've never posted snails before (though I've bought them from eBay) so if anyone reading this thread can give me advice I'd be grateful. I need to know what sort of age or size they can be posted, what kind of postage I should use, what kind of packaging etc. I'm guessing small tupperware pot with holes in, moist kitchen roll and some food. But beyond that I'm a bit in the dark and I don't want them arriving dead! When my fulicas laid, I took care of the "problem" in the usual way by freezing the eggs, but seeing as how much rarer Tigers are, I don't really want to do that, but I also don't want to end up with a hundred plus of them on my hands. Luckily Tigers seem to breed so rarely I'm not likely to be overrun if I do keep them. I'll keep posting updates and I'll certainly send you some. Drop me a PM so I can contact you when they're ready. |
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Post by lorisarvendu on Apr 22, 2016 23:15:36 GMT
Huge eggs! About 8mm long.  |
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Post by etana on Apr 23, 2016 7:01:05 GMT
Wow, a great example of how hard it is to see the size of something in a photo. Now I'm like "Oh... One egg is almost 1cm...so that makes that snail... actually... gigantic!  " Gorgeous snail, congrats on the eggs. My big Tiger doesn't have a mature partner, just some baby size tankmates so I'm still waiting for this myself, probably will for some more years. Sigh. But Tigers are so great. |
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Post by lorisarvendu on Apr 23, 2016 9:25:34 GMT
Yes it is hard to gauge without either a hand or a ruler. I've just measured Franklin's shell and it's about 16cm/6.5 inches from rim to tip. Bonapart is about half an inch/2cm shorter. Incidentally Franklin weighs just under 700gm. 0.7 of a kilo!
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Post by lorisarvendu on May 9, 2016 8:20:23 GMT
Well it's been over 2 weeks now, and absolutely no sign of hatching. The eggs are in a separate tank in a warm room with heat-mat and plenty of moisture, but not a sausage. Anyone else hatched tigers? Is this not unusual or have I got a bunch of sterile duds?
EDIT: After a lot of googling around it appears they can take anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks to hatch, so that's not so bad then.
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Post by eilisnail on May 11, 2016 19:26:57 GMT
Congratulations! Excellent photo as well, really great to be able to see the eggs so clearly. I also am in the south of England and would love a pair (I will pay postage and packaging of course), assuming they do hatch.
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Post by lorisarvendu on May 18, 2016 21:30:35 GMT
Wahey! 4 weeks to the day (April 20th) the first snail has hatched! At this stage it is the same size as the egg it came from - about 8mm. Note the remains of shell on the back.   |
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Post by chopper on May 18, 2016 21:44:21 GMT
That is so awesome!! Congratulations!
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Post by etana on May 19, 2016 4:58:14 GMT
Congrats!! |
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Post by lorisarvendu on May 20, 2016 17:14:01 GMT
I've been carefully poking about the soil and I've found these two objects. The first one is a different snail to the one I found earlier, so at least two have hatched.  The second one is interesting. It appears to be an empty immature shell. Obviously snails must begin to build up a few layers of shell while they're still in the egg, but this one may have died and dissolved back into the contents of it's egg, and then one of the other hatchlings ate the egg from around it, exposing this empty shell. I can't imagine that it would have hatched and then been eaten by one of it's siblings.  I'm pretty certain there are more of them in there, because although there are still several eggs dotted about, I'm also starting to see egg fragments. I've sprinkled cuttle-shell crumbs throughout the soil to see if that cuts down on the inevitable calcium cannibalising! |
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Post by lorisarvendu on May 21, 2016 9:33:43 GMT
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Post by etana on May 21, 2016 16:10:45 GMT
Ohh, such a precious little baby. Thanks for sharing. |
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Post by chopper on May 23, 2016 13:08:16 GMT
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Post by lorisarvendu on May 25, 2016 10:54:05 GMT
Well things are progressing very slowly and very strangely. There are still a huge amount of eggs there, and so far I only seem to have had 2 live hatchlings. However I've found at least 10 "empty" shells. By that I mean snail shells, not egg shells. Some of them are completely out of the egg, others are partially out, or have bits of shell stuck to them. But all of them are empty.
Has anyone ever experienced this before? I've moved the two live hatchlings into another smaller container with a small heat pad on the side so I can keep track of them. Do hatchlings cannibalise unhatched eggs for the calcium? If so, do they somehow target immature eggs, or eggs where the inhabitant has died?
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Post by etana on May 25, 2016 12:34:27 GMT
Egg cannibalism is normal and necessary for some land snails - there was actually a study with Cepaea snails that showed that if the young can't egg cannibalise, their growth is disturbed. I know it can't be applied to the Tiger snail 100% right away, but just saying it's not unseen with land snails. Some snails also lay lots of infertile eggs with the fertile ones, probably so that the hatchlings can have extra calcium.
I would *think* they primarily target eggs with something wrong with them. Let us know how things proceed now.
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yoruni
Archachatina marginata
Posts: 21 
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Post by yoruni on May 25, 2016 15:27:54 GMT
Oh my gosh I am in love, congratulations Yes, canibalism is pretty popular, they catch easy calcium and proteins, that's why I take away hatched kids from incubator to separate "kinder-garden box" |
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Post by lorisarvendu on May 26, 2016 9:51:19 GMT
Oh my gosh I am in love, congratulations Yes, canibalism is pretty popular, they catch easy calcium and proteins, that's why I take away hatched kids from incubator to separate "kinder-garden box" Yup I've done that. The eggs are very slow to hatch, but there are the odd one or two showing signs of life. I'm not sure how long I should wait though, it's been just over 5 weeks since laying. Here's one of the new ones exploring the side of the "kinder-garden box"  |
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Post by lorisarvendu on Jun 12, 2016 14:17:17 GMT
Hmph. #depressed. My earlier discovery of a second snail was either the first one having grown a few more stripes on the shell, or it has been eaten (shell and all), as after all this time I have only seen one hatchling. Yup, all those eggs are duds. I found a few partially-unhatched ones and assumed they were in the process of hatching, but they weren't. Either that or they died half-way out. There are still a large bunch of them left, but no life at all. One hatchling, that's all that made it out.
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Post by lorisarvendu on Jun 13, 2016 18:48:55 GMT
Good grief. The saga continues. I was cleaning the big fellas out this evening. Lifted up one of the flowerpots and found this underneath.  I don't know who laid these, or how they got them underneath a flowerpot. Here we go again. |
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Post by adventureswithsnails on Jun 20, 2016 18:53:31 GMT
Aww,baby snails are always such cuties Despite how futile it might seem, don't give up hope... My C. nemoralis laid two clutches of eggs and I wrote them off due to forgetting to mist their tank for a week, but today the second clutch hatched and I'm faced with over a dozen babies. They took over three weeks since laying, and more have been emerging from the "nest" throughout the day. |
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Post by astana on Jul 15, 2016 1:49:59 GMT
Congratulations! Though it looks like you have quite a handful now xD
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Post by lorisarvendu on Aug 30, 2016 15:31:05 GMT
A late update, 'cos I've been busy with hols etc. In the end only 3 snails hatched! Perhaps I should say "survived" as there were a few tiny "empty" shells dotted about, so I've no idea what happened there. Very surprising to get only three from two large clutches, but at least I'm not overrun. I'll probably post a couple of photos when they get a bit bigger.
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Shouldn't be a bad brood, as Franklin and Bony were bought separately and so aren't related.
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