GALS: surprise babies but no eggs in sight

[toadcryptid]

Hey again folks!
I have a problem. As ive mention in a previous thread im fairly new to this and am still learning a lot.

Ive been checking my snails terrarium every single day since i got them to check for eggs and two times ive found a batch and picked them out and frozen them. But yesterday evening I checked the terrarium again and to my surprise (and slight horror) there was 17 baby snails crawling around!! I of course moved the babies to their own tank since I had an extra before checking the entire terrarium that Rigor and Mortis live in thoroughly. No eggs anywhere!

So can anyone explain: How does this happen? Where did they come from?
It's obviously my snails babies since the babies look just like them but are smaller than the nail on my pinky finger.

[SuspiciousBagel]

Snails can lay eggs literally hours before they hatch afaik. If you don't want to raise them and go through the whole culling process then I'd suggest you just crush them and feed some back to the adults for protein.

17 babies is quite little for a clutch of GALS though, what species are they?

[toadcryptid]

Well 20 babies now, I'm still going through the terrarium looking for more, so small it's kinda difficult to see them in the substrate. I think they're
Achatina fulica but they're rescues from a neighbour who left them by my door when they moved so I'm not certain. They only started laying eggs like 2 months ago. Rigor and Mortis are about 8 months old and about 13 cm over the shell.

But good to know that it can go that fast to hatching! Thank you for letting me know!

[snaileyhammy]

I’m thinking that they are some eggs you did not see and they just now hatched. It happens sometimes. If you don’t want to care for them, I’ll say instead of killing them try and get them too someone else who wants too. Like a breeder or another snail owner. If you want to sell the babies you will have to do culling. If you do not want to cull, you can keep the babies and separate the runts and see what runts can survive. You can’t re-home the runts, but you can keep them and try and give them a happy life (only do this if you are confident and have good experience). The runts won’t live as long, and some with severe problems may have to be euthanized. Then you can re-home all the babies except the runts.

It all depends on what you want to do. Some people are comfortable with different things. I hope all is well, and I wish you luck!