# Mystery Snail not moving for a few days?



## ironklad

I have two adult mystery snails in my tank. They laid eggs about 3 weeks ago, and since then, they both became rather inactive. One of them is moving around and eating, but much less than usual. The other one hasn't moved at all in the last 4 days or so, but it's definitely alive (it retracts further into the shell when I poke at it's "door"). Is there any relation to the recent egg-laying, maybe it wore them out? Water chemistry is good, 0 ammonia 0 nitrate 0 nitrite. PH has been fluctuating a bit, but generally around 6.8-7.

Thanks


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## tbub1221

In my experience , there not something that sticks around a very long time , most times the ones at LfS that are a desirable size (3/4-1") are adults .
Also farmers grow them out in heavily planted tanks where they eat a lot and grow fast , so if your tank doesn't have a whole lot of food they slowly starve , a good sigh there on the way out is foot shrinking , not able to rite themselves and lack of movement.
Bear in mind snails do sleep a lot sometimes but mastery should still move about, if they don't move for a few days AMD there not extending there food pull them out and smell them , if dead toil be able to smell it , its rank.
On another note , I personally found nerite snails to live a bit longer , but there much smaller and slower movers than mystery snails , so I keep both and just replace them every few months.
The one apple snail I had that lived longest I got at about the size of a pea , it was 1.2" In 6 months

It's off subject a bit but I had 2 turbo snails given to me from a buddy for a diatom algae issue I had after cycling my saltwater tank a Mont ago , after the algae was in control they did fine for about 3 weeks cleaning my live rock then shrank and died within 2 days of one another.
I think its just hard to keep bigger snails.
Iv hot 20 some odd mixed types of smaller snails all doing what snails do , just the big ones starve.

I hope yours do better than mine did , and if that clutch hatches , you will have all the snails ud ever want , best of luck


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## ironklad

Thanks for the reply. I usually feed them an algae wafer ever 3 days or so, plus they eat algae from the glass (I only clean the front), and they also eat dead leaves from my plants. The non-moving snail is alive; it doesn't smell rotten, and retracts further into its shell if I poke at its door.

On the bright side though, I did get around 8-10 babies, and they're growing fast!


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## Dafo

Hi. There are actually few other problems that can cause this kind of inactivity and finally death of aquarium snails. 

As far as I read the first description of your tank and water parameters, there is something wrong with your testing (0,0,0) - NO3, NO2, Ammonia - is not real testing (this ratio can never appear in any tank and is chemically impossible) so, I would advise you to really test the parameters if you want to help to your snails.

The problems you are writing about are in most cases the consequence of to high levels of heavy metals in the water. (specially Copper which you can distract from water with special pre-filter you add to reserve osmosis unit. - In case you use it) wCopper is very common metal in every tank water but the snails are far more affected than fish and it causes inactivity and death in majority of snail death cases. As other parameters we usually measure are not so big threat for them (No2, No3, phosphates, ammonia,..) 

It can also be in some cases adding of salt in aquarium that aquarists often do as prevention for fish parasites and gills infection. So salt is also deadly for freshwater snails. There can be also a lack of food but usually this is not the case.


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