Snail shell recovery

[Kat_Rigel]

Just thought this was something interesting to share. I keep mystery snails and had one that damaged it's shell from crawling out of the tank. I repaired it and he was actually doing quite well for quite a while. It died recently and I was very curious to see how the shell had repaired under the patch. The other snails in the tank cleaned out the shell fairly quickly (or at least before I found it.)

I thought it was really cool to see how the shell repaired itself. (See pics.) One could argue he would have survived without a patch, but... eh, I felt it was borderline. I use plastic grocery bag and Instant Ocean Hold Fast Aquarium Bond Stick. It's a pain in the butt to do it but I like to give the snails the best shot at recovery. My experience has been that they live longer with the patch, but their lifespan is generally shorter than an average snail.

[Radagast]

I think it's wonderful that you went the extra mile to give the little guy the best chance. I have a soft spot for snails, they were the very first aquatic creature I ever kept. At nine years old I had a Ramshorn snail in an old glass coffee jar next to the bed, looking back yes it was maybe cruel but I didn't know any better at that age.

Fast-forward to today and I have a little snail breeding program as well as my fish and aquatic plants. I like to keep pure lines of true blue, pearl pink, gold, red and two years ago we made our own purple ramshorns.

You probably know this already but if not here is a little bit of advice, If you find that your snails have weak shells you can supplement them with calcium. There are a number of ways to do this, you can add a cuttlefish bone to the tank, calcium carbonate tablets from the health store and a couple of others. The way I do it is to mix a paste of spirulina and plaster of paris and put them into small ice cube trays or roll into a ball. Forgive me if you know this already.

I wish your snails the best of health.

Best wishes, Scott

[Kat_Rigel]

11 hours ago, Radagast said:

I think it's wonderful that you went the extra mile to give the little guy the best chance.

Heck yeah! It was my fault it had a weak shell and that it crawled over the edge of the tank- I had gotten busy and neglected tank maintenance for a while, so the tank was overstocked with too few water changes. I also wasn't paying attention to their shell health.  As you mention, calcium helped them a lot and everybody is looking MUCH better. I haven't tried liquid calcium, but I do use crushed coral in the HOB and supplement with Tums, either crushed and mixed with some repashy, or straight into the tank once in a while. I've always felt like if you can give them a chance, you should. 🙂