Astrea mass spawning

[coralreefer]

A couple of weeks ago I went to top off my tank and I noticed that the water was extremely cloudy. At first I thought that some saltwater got on the glass and was spread around but I then realized that all of my astrea snails were mass spawning. Every single one of them had gone to the highest point on the glass. After turning my pumps off I could see that some of them were shooting streams of semen while others were discharging eggs. I've heard of other snails doing this but I thought astreas did it less frequently. Unfortunately, the battery in my camera was dead so I didn't get any pics. I was just curious who else has seen this and how often it has happened for them.

[sea monkey]

happened once to me.

[wes]

probably awesome food for your corals.

[Turf]

happend to me... then they all started to die, not really sure if it was related.

[David Grigor]

When Ron Shimek was in town years ago he said, it you have a spawning event of astrea. If you capture some sperm and some egg and put it in a dish on top of your tank so no predators with some algae and just let it sit you will get some babies and will get past the larvae stage so you can put in a refugium or something to grow out. If I remember though it takes about a year before they are of any size that's why you don't find captive in the hobby it's too much effort for too little money to go commercial. But apparently it's not hard.

[Turf]

that's good to know... may try it for fun some time.

[coralreefer]

Yeah, that would've been cool to try. It wouldn't have been hard to capture the sperm and eggs.

[wes]

very very cool. If I ever get a spawn, I'm totally going to try that.

[David Grigor]

If I recall in his talk spawning events with mature snails is triggered by temps.

[coralreefer]

I might have turned the a/c off for the day so its possible that temp played a role. Also, I had the light on for a few hours after it normally goes off.

[Turf]

warm or cool? ... I'd guess warm since we are in the summer.

... guess we posted at the same time