Snails

[dherrington1]

I purchased 10 of the brackish water snails from petshrimp several months ago. 3 have grown in size tremendously and are really active. They are not NASCAR fans as they only go clockwise in my tank, but they are very thorough, so we'll overlook that. My question/s is I have really small ones popping up above the substrate, but then they do not move at all. We're talking weeks with no movement. I isolated two of these in a small tank with the same water from the main tank and they have not moved from their original spots in over a week. How the heck can I tell if they are dead, hibernating, etc? The mystery around their popping up on the surface of the substrate is really bugging me. Also, none of them float to the surface. Thanks in advance!

[Vorteil]

Can you see the Operculum? Usually once the MTS dies the Operculum quickly detaches.

[dherrington1]

These things are so tiny that I cannot tell if it is there or not, even looking under a microscope. I might be able to probe to see if is there, but I'd hate to harm a live snail by doing that even as gently as possible.

[dherrington1]

So I took them out of the tank for a further inspection and while I couldn't truly see if the cover was there, a dental probe revealed that they were empty back to the first twist or so. I guess they must have surfaced from the shrimp or live snails agitating the substrate. Dang. I need to order more snails lol.

[Mustafa]

Yeah, when snails die and the flesh gets consumed by bacteria (and other snails), the shell becomes pretty light and gets transferred to the top of the substrate by the constant burrowing of the other snails. The good news is that you seem to have lots of reproduction as your substrate is getting moved quite a bit. There are always more snails than you think in any given tank because most of them are in the substrate.