New rescues

[justahannah]

At work, we've had an issue with our mystery snails dying due to copper plumbing in our main aquatics system. Originally we got around it by keeping them in a separate tank, but corporate threw a fit and wanted them back in the main set-up, so a lot of innocent snails have died. Since then, my manager has turned off the flow to one of the segments of the main tank, used a water conditioner that's supposed to handle metals, and we're doing water changes with a python. Snails are still dying, and it's really bumming me out...my manager's trying to fix it, but she has to get permission for everything from the corporate blockheads and they are slow.

I came in to work this morning, and the closer had pulled a bunch of 'dead' snails (sometimes it's hard to tell) to count and account for them, but didn't finish her job and left them to dry out in one of our plastic fish holder things overnight. As I sorted through them, I noticed three that still had their doors tightly shut and figured what the hell, put them in some clean water and brought them home (with permission, since they were already 'dead') to see if they'll come back to life in my tank. I didn't have high hopes, between toxic work water and an over-nighter on dry land, but I think they'll make it.

So here's a pic (please ignore the algae!). The blue is good to go, I snapped this pic as he was coming out of his shell after 6+ hours of detoxing, he's since traveled a few inches and buried himself in the sand. The other two still look like in the pic...They're alive enough to snap shut when I stick my hand in the tank (I didn't want them rotting in the tank overnight so I poked them to check), so I'm hoping they'll perk up if they can still protect themselves. Other than clean water and time, is there anything I can do for them? Thanks!

[shawnhu]

Pray in your religion of choice.

I wish I had more helpful information, but you're doing a great thing there, keep it up!

[Lupin]

You're doing well, Hannah! Attagirl! I'm proud of ya.:thumbsup: I could offer you some tea for saving the snails.:headbang2:

[pik01]

Best of luck with the snails. Mail the dead ones from work to corporate.

[stezatois]

Nice rescue, you have some pretty snails there. Now if it were me and i was the manager i would sneak them back into another tank and hide it when corporate turned up lol. You would think they would have the sense to realise that the copper was killing the snails.

or as mentioned mail then to corporate that could work

[Lupin]

Hannah, couldn't you write to the corporate and submit your findings on copper being toxic to the snails? If I were you, compile all references about copper and its side effects on invertebrates. Get a copper test kit and measure the copper content on the water from copper plumbing. If copper were chelated and in low concentrations, it wouldn't be an issue but with copper plumbing, it isn't so that's another story unfortunately. If the corporate idiots are so slow, why not report to the ASPCA and defend your store's actions for trying to keep the snails alive? I realize our perception towards different kinds of animals is different but that's no reason why they should continue abusing the snails by disallowing safer methods which also cut their profits. The snail abuse gets to me so easily. Sorry, I had to get it off from inside me this time.:(

[murraycod]

Good on you for your concern, Hannah. I have freshwater mussels, Velesunio ambiguous, which certainly help keep some of my tanks clean. These are Australian, but there my be similar mussels near you, which might help in some small way if placed near the snails while they recouperate. They'd keep a fresh stream of water moving around the snails and absorb waste without illeffect. They can and do travel though (strange to watch), so it might be necessary to net them together with the snails.
Same biotope as your mate Melanotaenia fluviatilis. Good luck, Hannah.

[Kashta]

Sweet snails. I hope they make it.

[msjinkzd]

I would just make sure they have ample food and excellent water conditions to recover. For the record, these snails can survive WEEKS out of water. I hope that they only continue to improve for you.

[justahannah]

Thanks everyone...Lupin, after I'm off today I'm going try and track down someone at a level that can help. I'll have to go above the district people since they're the ones that made us put them back, but keep it low enough I'll get more action than a form letter in return, because I've already seen a couple of those.

Blue guy is doing awesome, he's cruising the back glass this morning. Gold and Black are still about the same, except Gold's starting to feel around with one antenna so I think he'll be exploring by the time I get off work. Black still closes when I poke him, so he just needs extra time. I'll take good pics when they're decent :D.

[wendamus]

Just for kicks, I looked it up online to see what they'd do for a human with copper poisoning, and it mentioned activated charcoal to get as much out of their system as possible. If you don't use activated charcoal in your filtration, or if it's old, you might consider changing it just to ensure there's not ANY more copper in their current water.

Another thing I read is that copper poisoning (in humans) impairs calcium absorption. Since calcium is so important to our snails, I'd recommend very aggressive calcium supplementation, using snail jello, calcium 'licks' in the tank, etc.

Again, I don't know if any of this will help, all I can do is read the biochemistry stuff about humans and make educated guesses. There's a bunch of other stuff in there that I didn't understand - if any of you are nurses or doctors, maybe you can figure out other options? (I don't think Dialyses is much of an option... ;-) )

[Lupin]

The black is a dark striped purple. Good luck and please let us know anything that happened.:)

[wendamus]

How're they doing?

[justahannah]

Been super busy and slacking on the updates. We got permission to have the snails all in one tank but it has to be part of the main wall system, so we've disconnected a single segment from the big system and hooked a canister filter through the holes in the wall left by the main plumbing so it's effectively a separate unit now, just a matter of getting the canister cycled (we've already squeezed filter gunk into it) so the snail deaths should end shortly :D.

As for my rescues, Blue and Gold are doing awesome and have been cruising all over the place. Here's a pic of Blue and Ivory (a previous rescue) hanging out, and another of all four I took last night...Blue and Gold were digging themselves into a hole and Ivory was checking the operation out. The purple isn't doing so hot, it's still in it's original position, but it's gone from being open and closing when touched to just being tightly shut all the time. I just moved it more directly under the filter flow, hoping the extra oxygen and water flow will help flush it of any remaining copper and stimulate some movement, but I can't think of anything else to do (besides waiting). It's tightly closed, and there's nothing gunky seeping around the door, so I'm assuming it's still alive for the moment. So that's what's up with my snails.

[murraycod]

Well done, Hannah.

[Lupin]

The purple must be in worse state than the blue and gold but at least, they're still alive and coping well.

[Fishy_Fun]

But isn't the copper also helping the fish against parasites?I bet none of the fish have ick.

[justahannah]

True dat, I never thought of it that way...occasionally new fish come in with it (I've seen it 3-4 times since October, seems to always be the glass fish and the silver dollars, and last week all of our large feeder comets had it) but it doesn't seem to spread despite the tropicals all sharing one system and the cold water species sharing the other, and it's usually gone within a week or so. We only treat with sodium thiosulfate as a dechlorinator (medications stay in the quarantine tanks in back), so the copper would make sense as being the inhibiting agent. From what I understand, the copper piping/invert issue is fairly isolated, our store is one of a few older ones that still has the older aquatics system in place and most of the other stores have upgraded or are new enough builds that everything is PVC now.

[wendamus]

Yeah, can't fault the copper in some respects, but it's good you figured out it was killing your inverts. I'm glad to hear most of the snails are doing well, and with luck your purple will pull through. Nice rescues!

[justahannah]

The purple guy didn't make it. He spent a day floating, and then yesterday I pulled him because he was all open and limp and unresponsive. I guess two out of three isn't bad.

[CrownTailLover]

I'm sorry to hear that the purple dude didn't make it, he was really pretty. But congrats on saving many a future snail!