I got four big, healthy apple snails for my freshwater aquarium which mantains a temperature of 72-80 degrees Fahrenheit and has no salt what so ever in it... they were totally fine and were very active. But within 1 week, all were dead! The water was fine... all the fish were okay and weren't sick... WHY did they all die???
sorry for the :OT: but can this happen to pond snails? my pond snail was hiding in his shell for like, 1 and 1/2 weeks... now, he's back to being my happy little active cleanup man lol.
now back to topic:
you can tell if a snail died because most likely the trapdoor thing falls off and the snail's body is drooping out. and if you hold the snail and take it out of the water, it DEFINATELY smells like dead fish at the local fish market... and I mean DEFINATELY!!
That is definately not the word here. I keep a 29G snail tank and have no salt and have had no deaths. I do feed them fresh veggies, but I doubt that they would starve to death in a week. I honestly dont know what you tell you other than perhaps you have something in your water that your snails wont tolerate. Have you ever used a copper based med? You have to remember that snails are more similar to parasites than to fish so many anti parasitic meds will harm snails.
I have been keeping apple snails for a while. I was told that there life expectancy is only about 6 months, so if you want to keep them long term you will need to keep a fair number and hope that they breed, which is apparantly not difficult to do.
I recently lost an apple snail and threw it out after carefully inspecting it. A second one later died as well and after poking and proding, I put it in the bin too, only to later discover the snail didn't like it in the bin! The second one is back in the tank, but I can't help thinking that the first one may have prematurely disposed of.
Apple snails are suppose to be able to breathe air, so you could always leave one in a small bowl of water, to ensure it is dead...
(They do nasty things to the water though if you leave a dead one in the tank.)
I have been keeping apple snails for a while. I was told that there life expectancy is only about 6 months, so if you want to keep them long term you will need to keep a fair number and hope that they breed, which is apparantly not difficult to do.
A more reasonble life expectancy is about 2 years. A little less if kept in tropical temps. They can live longer if fed properly and kept in the high 60s range in temp. I have had my ivory snail for 8 months and it was fully grown when I purchased it.
