Nassarius snail captive breeding

[Stoney Mahony]

Does anybody have any experience with breeding nassarius in captivity? I wanted to know how frequent they spawn and what tank parameters they like. How often do they need to eat? I am setting up a controlled experiment so they will not be in a tank with corals or fish, just a 4-6" sand bed. Any info would be awsome!

 

[Black Mammoth]

I was going to ask something similar. I read on live aquaria that Nassarius and Margarita snails are difficult to breed in captivity. I noticed that they are breeding in my tank. Here are my paramaters.

75 Gal
80 degrees
1.026
3" sand bed
Nitrate, Nitrate, and Amonia 0
Calcium: ~410
Alkalinity: ~12
Ph: ~8.4
Lights: T5 4x54
Flow: Tunze ~1450gph
Live Rock: ~85lbs

5 Green Chromis
2 Ocellaris
and as of yesterday 1 Magnificent Foxface

 

[Stoney Mahony]

How often do they spawn? How many nassarius do you have? Thanks for the input!

 

[Black Mammoth]

I'm sorry, I don't really know anything about their reproduction. I'll try my best, please sift through the incorrect terminology.

I'm not sure how much I have. I kind of found out by accident. I ordered several (10 - 15) Nassirus snails about a year ago. Then about 6 months I bought 6 very large ones from a my LFS. I also bought about 20 Margarita snails from them about 9 months ago. A few months ago I thought I saw snail "eggs" (or group of the babbies). I thought, nah they won't breed in here and I dismissed them as bubbles. I forgot about them. But in the past month I've noticed really tiny Nassarius snails in my tank. I could have sworn when I bought them last year that they were bigger. I also figured they would have grown. I suspected that they were new babies. However, I wasn't 100% sure. I think the proof came, at least for the Margarita snails, two weeks ago. I had to pull out a piece of live rock. I found what I thought to be a slug on the rock. I was like this is really weird. Then after closer inspection it had a very small and thin shell. It was growing a shell! So now I'm 99% sure that both Nassarius and Margarita snails are reproducing in my tank.

Now how often do they spawn and how many? I'm not really sure. I've only found 1 new Margarita snail and he seems fairly big. I think I've noticed about 5 or so Nassarius snail. I wish I knew the answer, but I found out by luck. I'm not sure if these guys just happened to get by the fish, my cleanings, etc. I'm not sure how many have died trying to make it.

I wish I could give you more info, but unfortantely this all I have. Just shear dumb luck I guess. I hope I get more, because I'm tired of buying snails and it would be nice to propogate them

 

[Stoney Mahony]

Thanks for the info! l was not sure if you actually were there to watch them reproduce or not. I have some other tiny snail like hitch hikers that came in on a piece of live rock and I have watched them reproduce a couple of times. One large one will crawl out from his hole and stand straight up like he is stretching up to reach a far away rock. Then he starts pumping out these little bursts of whites sperm every couple of seconds. About 10 secounds later I started to see about five other smaller ones come out of the rock work and do the same thing but they all pumped out bursts of what looked like bubbles but had to have been eggs. The eggs float up through the sperm and get fertalized. I just ordered a ton of nassarius off of ebay for like a dollar and I am going to try to raise them at my house and use their free swimming larva for a live food for my sps tank. Thanks for the info, I will keep you updated on how everything works out.

 

[Black Mammoth]

Correction on the Alk. It's around ~6.9 I'm not sure where 12 came from.