Dead/Sick Mystery Snail?

Jazmin0303

Jazmin0303

AC Members
Dec 28, 2017
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Spartanburg, South Carolina
B0D224CA-73A8-4581-8CBB-34415E67987C.jpeg So I noticed that my snail, Gary, has been a lot less active lately. He hid in one of the rock cave huts for like a week and then came out and has barely moved at all since then. He’ll come out of his shell ever so slightly and then go back in and I don’t know what wrong with him. He looked like he wasn’t okay for a little while, he went up to his food and actually ate it after weeks of barely moving, but he’s back to not moving at all again. What do I do?

The picture is of him being a little bit out of his shell like i described. That’s the most he’ll come out of it. I did notice that whenever he come out of the hut he started acting weird for a minute, it looked like he was stretching but it was the back part of his foot, not the part with his head? It was like reaching upwards then curl back in and upwards again.

It also seemed like his air tube thingy was white and puffy at one point so I scooped him out and had him out of the water for a minute to see if he would breathe and when I set him back in the tank he moved around for a little while before going to the place where he is at in the picture and hadn’t moved since...

This all has been going on for at least three weeks now...
 
What is in the tank with him?
 
I forget, what are your water parameters now? Is the betta or corys "too busy" by, or nipping him? His body seems darker than the pink/purple 1s I had several years ago or the 1s I remember from many years ago.

Have you vacuumed out the "caves" lately? There might be some yuck build up in them...
 
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fishorama said:
I forget, what are your water parameters now? Is the betta or corys "too busy" by, or nipping him? His body seems darker than the pink/purple 1s I had several years ago or the 1s I remember from many years ago.

Have you vacuumed out the "caves" lately? There might be some yuck build up in them...
Click to expand...

The betta doesn’t really bother him. He was in there before the betta came in and after a couple of weeks he started acting a bit odd. I’ll have to check my parameters today, i guess i forgot to check them last week when I did the last water change but I’m supposed to do another one today so I’ll check them when I do that.

I cleaned the caves last week when I last did a water change and tried to get the brown stuff off (diatoms?). As for the cories, they don’t really mess with him. I did notice yesterday that they started to hang out near him but I think that’s just because he’s right next to where they like to go hide
 
So I checked my parameters and forgot to post but here it is;
Nitrate 20 ppm,
nitrite 0 ppm,
hardness 150 ppm,
alkalinity 0 ppm,
ph 6.2

Also, I took him out while doing the water change and left him out for a minute. He seemed to have gotten some air and stay out of his shell kind of like how he was in the picture in my original post.

When I put him back in the water he was kind of floaty? Like there was air in his shell but he stayed at the bottom. He then started moving a little but that’s it. He still isn’t acting normal..
 
fishorama said:
Well, I'm no snail expert by any means, but "floaty" doesn't seem good. I'm concerned about your 0 for KH (alkalinity) & low pH.
Click to expand...

Do you know how I might be able to fix both of those? I’m planning on getting an actual water testing kit soon since I’m using strips right now and doubt they’re the most accurate but I haven’t been able to go to the pet store lately...
 
If you have a clean shell around, you can put that in. Or, make snail jello (google for the recipe, it's easy to make).

Snails can clear the air on their own. They will stay retracted if they feel threatened (ie, if you keep touching it). However, why did you remove it from the water? Taking animals out of the water to clean should be unnecessary.
 
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OrionGirl said:
If you have a clean shell around, you can put that in. Or, make snail jello (google for the recipe, it's easy to make).

Snails can clear the air on their own. They will stay retracted if they feel threatened (ie, if you keep touching it). However, why did you remove it from the water? Taking animals out of the water to clean should be unnecessary.
Click to expand...

I’ll look up the snail jello then! And I picked him up because he hadn’t gone up for air in over a week and I was getting a little worried about him not getting any air.
 
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