Whats the easiest snail to breed?

[Mysterion]

I'm looking to have a steady supply of snails to feed my mantis shrimp. I have a 2.5g, and 5g tank and a low flowing 16gph hob filter for the job. It sucks seeing my cerith snail laying unfertilized eggs all over the tank knowing the chances are slim of them hatching even with a mate. My nerites don't lay eggs either. Whats a good snail that breeds like rabbits?
Also how should I set the snail breeding tank up in terms of sand/no sand, add calcium/don't add etc. Thanks.

 

[TheMick75]

My trochus snails had babies....i have hundreds of little ones now...but they're slow growers, so it takes about a year (i'm guesstimating, as I started noticing the babies around 6 months ago) before they'd be of a size that would be appetizing to your shrimp i think...

 

[arioch]

Euplica sp. conchs (the ones sold as "Strombus grazers" from ipsf, also available elsewhere like fragglereef) apparently breed readily in a tank, since they lay eggs and the young do not go into the water column.

Not sure what their growth/maturation rate is. I got a batch from fragglereef because I didn't feel like paying $100+ for a package of stuff I didn't conscientiously need just to get the snails from ipsf, and now I'm trying to see if I can breed them. They're rather small for average sized mantis, though, only about 1/2-3/4".

 

[Mysterion]

Sounds like nano conchs breed quickest, going to use those, thanks.

 

[J. Montgomery]

stomatella snails breed prolifically in reef tanks

 

[arioch]

Indeed, for smaller mantis you would not go wrong with stomatella and these euplicas. I also use non-reef-safe crabs from a LFS for feeding my mantis.

 

[disciple]

Strombus Grazers (Strombus maculatus) from www.ipsf.com
* Maximum size: 1/2 inch
* Number of egg capsules produced: 2-4 per spawning event
* Number of eggs per capsule: 4-10
* Time to hatching: 3-4 weeks
I bought a reef tank cleanup package from these guys. These guys are small but prolific and grow fast.

 

[disciple]

Strombus Grazers (Strombus maculatus) from www.ipsf.com
* Maximum size: 1/2 inch
* Number of egg capsules produced: 2-4 per spawning event
* Number of eggs per capsule: 4-10
* Time to hatching: 3-4 weeks
I bought a reef tank cleanup package from these guys. These guys are small but prolific and grow fast.

 

[arioch]

Those are the ones I was talking about, and with the same caveats (only available in the big package, and you don't necessarily care about (m)any of the other stuff if you're keeping a mantis tank).

See: http://bb.wetwebmedia.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=341

These are still great snails, however.

As an aside, I have a real problem with ipsf, and not just the fact that their package deals are terribly designed. The other problem is that they don't really seem to care to tell you exactly what they're selling--"yeah well we don't like that name so we'll call it this" is a common phrase seen on their product pages, as well as "up to" and "around so and so". Not very confidence-inspiring, when the big package still has numbers of some of the creatures that you can count on one hand and might not even find each other to reproduce in the average reef tank.