I want to breed my 12 golden apple snails.

Problem: i am about 90% sure i have 12 females.

i have no males.

i have slowly gathered up my snail collection by just getting 1 here or 2 there. i would have thought doing it that way i would surely find a boy or two along the way.

My snails are all good sizes. range from ping pong balls to a tennis ball.

i have been feeding them up (and my gosh they can pack it away , gluttons!!)

i have done allsorts of tricks to encourage them just in case i have sexed them wrong.

i am starting to get a bit peeved :evil:

Does anyone have any ideas?

Does anyone have a proven breeding pair of snails or a guarenteed male that they would sell??

I have 20 of the little guys eating me out of house and home at present. Yup, truly gluttons. The rate of growth is amazing though. They've grown from 1cm to up to 3cm in just a week or two. Still very small from your breeding size but yeah, will keep an eye out for males for you when they get a bit larger. Oh, they're pretty tough to breed from what I've read.

Oh cheers! thanks for the quick reply! if you can find a boy in your lot then i will gaurentee a home for him!! it is starting to drive me bonkers! One of the few critters that i actually am trying to breed rather than just doing it willy nilly!

On one place I read it said rising temperature with excess food can help with breeding. Perhaps put them temp up a few degrees?

Have you tried waving the TV remote in front of them...you know males will respond to that :lol: :lol: :oops: sorry guys :lol:

oh i discovered i can't count :oops:

i have 14 snails not 12. i forgot to count the latest 2

i think that makes it worse. Perhapes a male would be a bit daunted by the idea of having 14 girlfriends

oh and thank you so much to the kind folks who have offered to keep an eye out for boys for me.

Loopy, there is a statistical impossibility that you have 14 females and 0 males in a .50 ratio snail like apple snails. Now, you've been getting snails from willy-nilly so you need to make sure that they're the same species first. Then check the sexes. It's all covered on applesnail.net and I'm sure you'll find that some of your girls are boys after all.

It may be an improbability but not an impossibility. :lol:

i have been to applesnail.net many times. i have photos clearly showing male and female differences from that site as a screensaver, So i have studied them well. i have also studied my snails fairly well. i am also fairly sure that all my snails are Pomacea canaliculata.

i will be very happy for my snails to prove me wrong but as of yet they have not shown any breeding type behaviour despite my attempts to encourage them.

7 of my 14 snails are from one person and are very likely to be siblings. Apple snails can have broods which will be predominantly one sex, depending on enviromental factors (like crocodiles)

then i got 4 more from another source, 1 off trademe, and 2 more just recently from a friend.

i will how ever check what species they are and have a really good look at them this afternoon.

i am sorry i had it wrong it is not enviromental factors that can determine the sex ratio of apple snails.

Sex ratio

The sex ratio within apple snail populations is around 0.5, which means that there is an equal amount of males and females. However, the sex ratio between the broods of a population varies a lot. Some egg masses give almost exclusively male hatchlings, while other give exclusively female offspring. It was first thought that environmental factors influence the sex ratio in apple snails. For example the temperature could determine of the snail become male or female, like is the case for crocodiles.

Recent research (Yusa & Suzuki, 2003) shows that the sex ratio is likely genetical determined. It turns out that different spawns of a single mating pair shows little variation in sex ratio between the different broods, despite variations in environmental circumstances. This supports a genetic basis for sex determination.

In humans, the sex of an individual is determined by the X and the Y chromosomes (XX= female, XY= male). However, there is no clear evidence for the presence of X and Y chromosomes in apple snails. Most likely, apple snails have a different sex determining system, in which sex is determined by a number of genes (polyfactorial sex determination). The combination of at least three and most likely more genes determine the sex ratio. Future research will hopefully give a better insight in the sex determining mechanisms

i found the bit that i read about ratios on applesnail.net.

waiting for all the snails to come out and say hello! i have them all in a wee tank here beside the computer so i can compare them to the piccys!

dang snails are SO slow.

i have exactly the same problem,well almost.... i have 8 of the huge yellow garbage disposals and they will not breed,i knew of a wellington club member who had them breeding a few years back...so all going well, knowing thats its possible....heres hoping mine will too

oh and slow !!! realy? you should see mine when there on the move!!!

Tim