"Baby" Snails are Breeding?!

[malacophile]

When my 6 adult fulicas began laying eggs, I decided to keep some of the babies. Those babies hatched in early September of last year and are now a little over five months old. I noticed around a month and a half ago that they were showing signs of impending sexual maturity- bumps on the sides of their heads, then occasional erections. It didn't seem out of place at the time- I figured that full sexual maturity was still a little while off yet.

Fast forward to last night. I was doing a deep clean, and I was both amazed and horrified to find around 200 eggs. All were normal in size, shape and color. Even the shells were in excellent condition and surprisingly hard and thick. Of course, it HAD to be the "babies" laying them- they're the only snails in that particular bin. While I was baking their dirt and cleaning the bin, I put them into the adults' bin for about an hour. Imagine my shock when I see a "baby" perching on the back of an adult, and they were mating! They were interrupted because I didn't realize what was going on until I had the little snail halfway pried off of the back of the other one.

What bothers me about this is that these "babies" still look a lot like babies. The largest is maybe 3.5 inches (~8cm). I'm fairly certain that my adults were a good bit larger than this before they started breeding. It this normal, a case of precocious snail puberty, or have I done something wrong and they're not as big as they should be by now? I think it might be important to note that, as far as I know, these babies are first-generation inbred. However, besides this, there have been no other issues except bad shell growth on a few.

[tsrebel]

Sounds normal. You may not have noticed it when your first generation matured, or they were indeed older/larger before they did. And that again could have many causes. Fulicas don't stop growing when they become sexually mature, but they tend to slow down the growing a bit.

[malacophile]

Well, that's a relief. I figured it wasn't dire since all of the babies are healthy and active with hardy appetites. But it was still a bit disconcerting to think that I may have somehow stunted their growth or screwed up their hormones. I wish I could recall my adult snails' "teenager" period. I can't remember if I had found eggs before I first caught them mating, or if I found eggs after that.

The babies are definitely growing, at what looks like a pretty fast clip. I've noticed new bands of shell growth appearing every few days to a week lately. The adults are still growing noticeably, too (and here I though they couldn't possibly get any larger!), just a lot slower. The biggest one is starting to push in excess of 7 inches (~18cm) shell length!