Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

I bought a few of Mustafa's snails at least 6 months ago. Having had knee surgery I hadn't been paying as much attention to my tank as I should.

I'm looking at it now and see that the older snails, especially one grandpa that is nearly an inch long is almost entirely white. First whorl is yellow then others are white but it's shell is not pocked and it's going hell bent for food.

I assume this is a calcium diffeciency? I do keep rather soft tank, I've recently added a bird cuttle bone. Any other ideas to keep calcium up for the shrimps and snails? I think this has contributed to my gabonensis's problem after moulting and want to correct it.

My parameters are:
Nitrate: 20
Nitrite: 0
GH: 115
KH: 80
PH: 6.5 - 6.8

I have an RO/DI unit but have not been able to get consistent results with ro right type products.

Snails shells erode in lower PH's....that's the whitening you're seeing.

I wouldn't worry too much if the only snails you have are mts because i've received mts that were basically a nub for a shell, due to the low PH it was kept in but it managed fine.

I have the same problem in my tiger tank so i'm trying to sell my asolene spixi in that tank before the erosion gets too bad.

Thanks!

And my bad, the really white one is a malaysian, the ones I got from Mustafa just have the tip white.

I've heard good things about Seachem Equilibrium as a RO water treatment.

I know I have problems in some of my tanks with snail shells, but not in all of them. It's odd, as I use tapwater in all of them, but the snails do seem to use up carbonates (or calcium, maybe) from the water. A calcium-rich diet can help, too.