See, in Europe you can get snails in all the colours of the rainbow, and then some, but here in Australia I only ever see brown and golden ones. When asking in a forum if there are colourful ones to be found, they said no, and was I sure that the colourful ones were really mystery snails and not some other species?
So when I stumbled across a blue one I had to have it:
I have not seen any interestingly coloured mysery snails since then, so I see it as my duty to breed this one and spread some colour in the Australian mystery snail population.
I got lucky and it turned out to be a male, and that made things easy. I put him in the tank with my brown female, provided clean water and some good food, and before I knew it they were going at it like rabbits. The female laid her eggs 3 weeks ago, and they started hatching 3 days ago:
I was pleased to see that about 75% of the babies have dots. Dots are usually a sign of future stripes, and brown and golden snails don't have stripes, but their blue dad does. I was even more pleased after looking at macro shots of the babies and seeing that they have a hint of blue on them:
(These are about 2-3 mm long. Click for bigger version.)
So my little project worked:) I now have about 50 blue babies, and another clutch of eggs which will hatch in a few days, resulting in even more blue snails. I will keep some of them for myself, while I will sell the ones I don't have room for. That means the blue colour will spread around Australia.
And there's more good news. In the snail forum they said if I cross a blue snail with a golden one, I could get green babies. And about 25% of the babies are golden, so when they grow up and reach sexual maturity, I'll have heaps of golden snails to cross with the blue ones.
And baby snails are just the most adorable little things ever:) Especially with their blue little eyes and dots:)
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That is soooo cool! Diversity is the flavor of life right? I'm glad your project was successful, and the macro shots are great btw.
Thanks:)