Someone asked me to post this question. I'm not sure why they didn't post it directly themselves.

"My 6 yr old daughters snail Larry somehow gave birth. I was very shock to say the least. I found 4 dead ones out side the tank, I have counted 4 more still in the tank. Q: how many can a balck mystery snail have? And when? Her Gold Mystery snail Garry died a month ago and it was just gross. It oozed out of the shell.
I have called PetSmart and the young girl could not care enough to help me out. Q: how do I keep the other ones alive?
Just last week we cleaned the tank. Oh my gosh how many did I kill already?
In her tank is a spotted sucker fish, and 2 guppys. The tank is a small kids size. It does have a heater, and filter and air bubbler.

Can you help me out?

Mother of Happy Snails~"

I was able to copy over their message but couldn't find my sent reply to copy over. I don't have time right now to retype the message.

I double checked on the egg larva and I didn't find anything at all. I never saw anything either floating.
If it's true about this being a apple snail and they have lots of babies, I'm only finding 4 baby snails in the tank.
I did check out the web site on apple snails and my snail does not look like them at all. It doesn't have the tuby thing hanging out of the shell only has the two feelers.
I found 4 golden shell snails dead and the 4 left in the tank are black shells. WEIRD

Can anyone help me out. I really stink on this inter net stuff. I'm just a homemaker in Michigan who trying to help out her daughter.
Hey maybe I can get a brownie patch for this too? HA HA ( i'm a troop leader for 1st graders)

Chris~

Ok update on snail. I finally saw the tubby thing sticking up. It's small and the snail is black and the tubby sucker thing was black and yellow stripe.
I still can't find anymore babies. Today I could only find 2 baby snails in the tank.

I'll keep you all updated on my new friends.
Chris~

My suspicion is that your baby mystery snails are in fact not babies at all but adults of a different species of snail. Pond snails, ramshorn snails, and trumpet snails are all commonly found on live plants at the store. Do you have live plants? If not, have you added anything that came from another aquarium or a pond? If so, they could have been added that way or even as eggs. Apple snails (or mystery snails) lay large masses of eggs above the water line. There is really no way you would have missed them. Since you had 8 of these snails, I suspect they were small (not the tennis ball sized adults) and (if even apple snails) not mature.

Yes come to think of it. I did get two plants from Petsmart to put in the tank about couple of weeks ago, maybe around the fist part of January. Petsmart told me that fishes like the real plants not the plastic ones that I had.
So do you think that they came from the plants? That makes more sense on how many snails I have noticed. Cause I never did see anything like eggs floating, your right, how could I miss them.

Thanks for your info. Now I just have to figure out what kind they are or just go on with the normal daily life of a fish tank mommy. HEE HEE.

Chris~ :rolleyes:

Yes, when you get live plants, they very often have snails and/or their eggs on them. They are most likely to be Malaysian trumpet snails, small ramshorn snails, or pond snails.