I am just wondering what people do to maintain their snails shells. It seems no matter what I do I can not get them to stay as flawless as most of the people I see selling them. Have a pH from 7.6 to 7.8 in most of my snail tanks and the water is moderately hard. Yet the shells seem to erode. I have tried adding different nutrients to no real effect. Is it possibly a growth rate thing?
Maintaining Snail Shells
- Thread starter PhaidOut
- Start date
Are you adding calcium or at least feeding calcium-rich foods? Regardless of what I feed them and their water, I always give them added calcium (in my case I use Caltrate but you can use vacation feeders easily too). As soon as it's gone, I put another one in. Their shells are thick and healthy.
What kind of snails?
What kind of snails?
What temperature are you keeping them at? Warmer = faster growth, cooler = thicker growth. Feed snail jello fortified with calcium. Some recipes can be found in the stickies of the freshwater inverts section. Also, kensfish.com has veggie sticks fortified with calcium. You also can add cuttle bone (for birds) to the tank and the snails will rasp on it.
I had this same problem. I feed the vegie sticks with calcium, put calcium tablets in the tank, snail jello, zucchini, greens... but still couldn't keep good shells. I finally put a handful or 2 of Florida crushed coral in my snails tanks. That seems to have helped alot! I added it til I got the ph up where I wanted it. And like snoopy said, lower water temps.
I had the same problem. I threw some pieces of cuttle bone into my tank and their shells seem to be doing better.
Thanks to the OP for the post as I have been having same problem. So now I just learned something new to try!
I have been using cuttle bone and occasionally the veggie sticks from Ken. The temps on my tanks are normally between 76-80. I am talking about a few kinds of snails, MTS, Ramshorn, Mystery and Tylo. The Mystery do seem to have the issue when I feed them better - trying to encourage faster growth and I was thinking that made a difference in thickness. What I am most concerned about is the Tylos since I have Yellow Rabbits and Yellow Antenna that are breeding now. The Tylos are presently in 82F water.
I'll try the coral and see if that makes any difference. I know the water is pretty well buffered on the Alkaline side but maybe the coral will make the difference.
The issue I am seeing is the pitting and such, even if they are thicker shelled they still pit. Those that I have bought with perfect shells still pit pretty quickly. Does higher calcium levels in the shell just stop the pitting? That's the part I am kind of missing. I would think that there is something that is saturated in people's tanks that have no pitting issues that is not in mine. Not an actual issue with the shell that most everyone seems to be indicating.
I'll try the coral and see if that makes any difference. I know the water is pretty well buffered on the Alkaline side but maybe the coral will make the difference.
The issue I am seeing is the pitting and such, even if they are thicker shelled they still pit. Those that I have bought with perfect shells still pit pretty quickly. Does higher calcium levels in the shell just stop the pitting? That's the part I am kind of missing. I would think that there is something that is saturated in people's tanks that have no pitting issues that is not in mine. Not an actual issue with the shell that most everyone seems to be indicating.
