Baby astrea snails

[stevebk]

So I was looking into my 12gal nano-reef late last night, and found a tiny little snail crawling on the glass. It's got a perfect little astrea shell on it, even though it's only 1/4 inch in diameter maybe. I never noticed eggs anywhere, but the 2 astreas I have like to go deep in the rockwork, so I'm sure they reproduced there. So is there more? I can imagine my hermits or even my sixline wrasse might have chowed down on some, but I'm thinking there must be more than one. Any ideas from anyone about how many more there might be, and what the survival rate is?

 

[homerfish]

Hi,
Baby astrea snails are cute aren't they? I don't think too much is known about astrea snail reproduction but here is what I did find out. Astrea snails will spawn by spewing forth a white cloud into the tank which releases a stream of eggs. Based on this fact the survival rate is probably not that high because a lot of it could be filtered out. From what I was able to read is that astrea snails are also asexual.
Hope that helps.