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Trying To Save My Mystery Snails


Ulrum
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Hey everyone!

I'm going to be upfront with you all: when I set up my new twenty gallon tank about a month ago, I knew absolutely nothing about fishkeeping as a hobby particularly with regard to the nitrogen cycle, and for the most part I've gotten super lucky in that I happened to pick really hardy fish. Right now I have five black phantom tetras, five pearl danios, and three mystery snails.

The fish are all doing super well at this point, so I'm not too worried about them, but the snails have been having some issues that are almost certainly coming from the fact that I just dropped all of these live animals into the tank without cycling, because I just did not know what I was doing.

All three snails, over the course of the last week and a half or so, have gone into a sort of flipped over position with their trapdoors slightly ajar, and I can't find any resources for what specifically is wrong. I've been reading everything I can find, and I've been doing periodic checks to make sure they're still alive by smelling and checking muscle tension on the trapdoor, but they haven't moved from that position at all. The good news is that in the last two days or so, one of them seems to have recovered finally, and is moving around the whole tank doing snail things, but the other two are still stuck, and I'm getting more and more concerned.

I've been making sure they have plenty of appropriate food, I've made sure the water is at a good range for them in all of the appropriate parameters, but I don't know if there's anything else I can do, and I would really appreciate any advice I could get, because I really hate that I may have sent these snails on their way to their deaths because I started this new tank up without doing the research first.

Below is a picture of the two snails as they've been sitting for days:

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I hate to break it to you but a non-responsive snail is usually dead.  I have nerites. They escape occasionally. If I find one on the floor, I put him in dechlorinated water and if he is in the same position with no pooping or moving in 12 hours I call it done. ESPECIALLY  with a half open operculum (trapdoor thingy)--they just don't do that by choice.

Best bet--take them out of the tank and give them clean water in a jar with a bit of veggie like lettuce or cucumber. If they don't move in 12h, I am afraid it is too late.

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So the main reason I guess I've been holding onto some hope with these two has been that:

1. They still have muscle responses. They each close their operculum pretty quickly if it's messed with at all. 

2. The third snail was in a similar position for about a week and a half, and about two days ago got up and started movng around like nothing had ever been wrong.

I will definitely try the jar idea, and hopefully they pull through. If not, I'll at least be able to say that I tried everything I could.

Thank you so much for your response!

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Update:

 

Unfortunately, when I pulled them out to put them into a bowl, they did not respond at all. Since they had responded yesterday, I was hoping that they were still alive, but I was wrong.

Sucks, but hopefully I can do better by my remaining snail and any others I get in the future 

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Just for your last snail, that looks like a mighty clean tank--be sure they have some food getting to them. spilled fish food, that your other fish ignore, or a little bit of veggie is a good bet, then there are all kinds of fancy foods...

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I've been trying to use algae wafers, but he doesn't seem to go for those, so I've made sure when I drop fish flakes and such that some makes it to the bottom of the tank. I'll drop in some extra when the light goes out tonight, and see if I can pick up some zucchini when I go to the store tomorrow.

Do you recommend blanching veggies first, or just rinsing and dropping it in? 

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Yes that, I don't blanch. And if the lettuce or whatever is a bit on the wilty side they like that anyway. I have canned greenbeans that I have frozen in little clumps to make it easy when my cleanup crew needs veggies and I don't have fresh handy.

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