Snail Eggs everywhere

Hi,

My cerith snails? (think they are the ones, they are long cones that move around in the sand quite a bit) keep laying eggs all over the tank, this is all well and good, but i am not seeing any little snails.
I have however seen little brown pod sort of things on some of these eggs, and some fall into the sand.
Are these the baby snails, and they will take a while to grow to a size that is visible?
Is there a chance that out of the 5 of this species i have, they are all female and the eggs aren't getting fertilised?

Also on a side note, i keep seeing, increasing in size shrimp exoskeletons, every other day or so, i have managed to see one small shrimp, but it constantly moves or hides, and only ever catch a glimpse.
now im assuming this shrimp came off the live rock, so it could be any shrimp i guess.
The question is, how long will it take to grow up so that i can identify it?

Cheers for any help

 

Could be Mantis shrimp,not good, check out threads on parasite hitchhikers.

 

i hope its not a mantis shirmp... although from what wikipedia has to say, it being able to strike so fast that it creates light is pretty amazing. It's still really small4-5mm in length, and i see it every now and then, its just clear at the moment, so cant really tell what it could be.

 

i dont know that they create light, unless you tape flint to there claws lol

edit: i checked it does say that, but that is the first time i have ever heard that, thats cooler then just stunning the pray youd think more sites would say that if it does

 

Ok, so I found some time today to do a little research on this and have found out that it is possible to bread them, the eggs turn into a larval form, but fish eat them, they die if they get stuck in sand and filters etc. This seems to happen more than often so it's often very in successful for you to get off spring. Hope this helps anyone else.

 

yeah long larval stage with them, makes it difficult.

 

They didn't know this until recently when they used a brand new ultra high speed camera and more sophisticated sound equipment.