I was cleaning my tank today and looked at Speedy, my monster snail, and the bottom of her shell(where the trapdoor would cover if she was out) has huge cracks in it. I cant see her coming out the cracks, but theres big cracks. and on the little tip part of her shell(the tiniest part of the coil in the middle) is all reddish orange and pitted and rough looking(it looks the the rye chips in chex mix) what happened to my baby?!? I LOVE this snail! what can I do for her?!?!

calcify your water... Kent's Calcium is good or cuttlebone will put more calcium in ur water so the snail can repair herself.... but if peices of the shell come off and skin is exposed you must cover the open areas with the fallen off shell with glue...


take a look at applesnail.net

You can patch it with marine epoxy putty. I paint all my snails with clear nail polish (it doesn't hurt them as long as you don't get it on the soft parts of their bodies) to prevent this happening, as well as it slightly fixes already existing holes. Mine were damaged in shipping but when the holes especially in the spire are not all the way through, you can patch them or paint them. Just make sure that the nail polish is completely dry before you put them back in.

Ditto... calcium is one of the most important things you can do for your snail. Liquid calcium, cuttlebone, even eggshells have calcium. You can also buy snail food online that has a lot of calcium in it. Good luck!

Nailpolish!?!?! Just like regular old clear nailpolish??? Wont it hurt my fish??

How would I go about giving her calcium?? just stick a hunk of cuttlebones in the tank??? I finally got all my water chem straightened out after like 6 month of problems! What is the simplist way I can go about helping her?? Thanks!

Yup! Or you can use colored if you'd like.

It won't hurt your fish as long as it's completely dry when you put it back into the tank. Also, it will flake off after a while, and usually it's caught by the filter, but I suppose there's that possibility. Not that it's ever happened to me though.

I put a small 1"x1" piece in. It takes a reeeeaaallly long time to dissolve, so I also scrape some off in the tank with my fingernail to make a sort of powder.

Some people have had problems with it rotting and throwing off the water stuff, but I've had luck with it so far. And it's really cheap. You might also try Kent's Liquid Calcium. I saw it at Petco yesterday for $8.

Well, I polished my snails last night...no easy task, since my speedy loves to hang all the way out of her shell and crawl on me.....I couldnt get her to stay in so i didnt paint her soft body! they feel really gooey when theyre not all wet! \

so I got all my snails painted(with clear!) and numerous incredulous looks fromt he rest of hte family.....

I also bought a cuttlebone. next cleaning, I will take a piece off and put it in...can I burry it in the gravel or should I leave it out? will my fish eat it? theyre huge pigs!


thanks!

bury it in the gravel.. put in the filter anywhere u want.. nope ur fish wont eat it

I just plop mine in. The fish don't touch it. It doesn't have to be at the next cleaning either, just break off a quarter-sized chunk and drop it in.. you can bury it if you want.

My big old snail, Snail, had the same problem in his old age. Test your pH and make sure its on the alkaline side, not the acidic side. If its too low the shell will also get eaten away. You can buffer your pH by adding crushed coral (very slowly) to your tank. If you have fish though be very careful about a sudden pH swing. Going from a low to high pH is much safer than the other way around.

One other thing I discovered was that the little planorbid and physid snails I had in the tank (which I was raising as puffer food) were actually crawling on Snail and eating away his shell! I found lots of little pitted marks from their rasping. I immediately took all of those out. If you have live plants you may have a snail infestation and they can cause that as well. They also crawled under Snail's shell and started attacking his mantle. I think thats ultimately why he died.