Is My Golden Apple Snail Dieing ?

madjoker14

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Hello everyone, for the past 2 days iv seen my golden apple snail floating on the water, i though he was dead but when i pulled him out and with my finger i touched him and he pulled in the bottom of his shell to close up tighter,

Now again this morning i saw him floating and repeated again and he closed up tighter, but he still floats !?!?!

Is he dieing on me, or is this normal, i have 3 more golden apple snails and iv never seen this,can anyone help with this?? Thanks everyone :)
 
he's probably stressed has any fish or anyone be pecking or chasing him
 
i dont know if thats the case because the other 2 are chillin lol just moving around,eating, stretching out there you know what lol (cuz i have all males lol)

could it that hes dieing out??
 
YOU never see there you no what it only comes out when mating occurs and then sometimes you mat see it when it disengages with the female , i would check that they are all male .the only other things that stretch out are breathing tubes

is it a female ?
has it got a really dark bit at the start of its curly shell in the middle , also there are differences in shapes of shell

pomacea_bridgesi_sexdiff.jpg
pomacea_flagflag_sexdif.jpg


cos females can sometimes float around bofore they lay eggs

have you seen the snails mating

marisa_on_pom_flag.jpg


if she is pregnant then she will lay eggs above the water which will hatch in 2-3 weeks

info from <a href="http://www.applesnail.net/content/anatomy/reproduction.php" target="_blank">http://www.applesnail.net/content/anatomy/reproduction.php</a>
 
wow, well i toke some pics, b4 i post them, i toke the snail out and when i opened the bottom of its shell to expose the entire snail, it kinda just... did nothing untill i poked it (sorry hope i didnt hurt it) then it shuts up its shell and hides so thats how i know its still alive but this is what i got
1st pic- the snail in the tank
2nd pic- the snail at its rest postion,thats how it looks when its floating
3rd pic- me pulling the bottom of the shell

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this is my sick snail, like i sayd its been about 3 days now thats its just floating around, still alive too but i want to know if its dieing or geting ready to lay eggs,

as i statd i can pull the botton of the shell and i toke a look to see if i saw a penis and didnt so i can assume its a girl??

thanks for the help guys...
 
you need to take a pic of the snail in the same p[osition as the first pic i posted so we can see if there is a dark bit in the middle
my girls float for quite a while when preparing to lay they always stay near the top of the tank

dont try and pull it out the shell again just touch the trapdoor when you lift it out and if its still alive it shuts up tighter when they are dead they usually get a tiny trap door that stays open with the snail sorta hanging out of it a bit and dont move at all when out of the water or being touched

Do you feed your snails seperatly or just let them eat whats left over cos another possibility is that it's starving there isnt always enough in the tank to let 4 snails survive suffeciently
if you put some sinking pellets or wafers in the tank once a week as a supplement and see how you get on

i know it says 1 snails per 10 gallons although if i do have a few more than that i supplement feeding

Thanks Sarah x
 
vks eeryone for your help but i guess my snail died lastnight as i saw it on the gravels, and it was upside down (trap door facing up) and i tuchd the inside of the feets and it didnt pull back, toke a sniff and smells like shes been deaad for a couple hours,

kinda sad but life goes on, there is 1 question though, i have,well had 6 apple snails in a 20g then i moved them to a 10g tank,and for the past 2 months they been droping like fly's

i have 2 left and i dont want any morew to die, my water is fine as i did a test and my ph is at 7.4

so i dont know whats happing to them, any idea anyones?,
 
my water is fine as i did a test

What were the stats exactly? Any residual ammonia or nitrite can kill stressed snails if the exposure is long enough. Has the tank ever had fish meds used in it, and how long have you had the snails?
 
umm lets see,

all the test came back fine, these where the results

hp- 7.4
amm-0.0
nitrite-0.0
nitrate- 40ppm

if my fish are sick, such as fin rott , the eye stuff i take them out and put them in a diff container and treat them, that i know i have used any meds in the main tank,

I do however use this in the tank,

with every water change i put the fallowing

de-chlorine::::

salt :::: (for the mollies)

plant grow-iron enriched :::: it does containt iron-0.26% and copper- 0.0005% <--maybe that would be bad??

and at one point i was using toms(for humans):::: as there shell was rotting and some ppl on the forum and lfs told me that i could use toms as its has calcium and would/will help there shells from rotting and aid in rebuilding (dont know how truth that is but i been using it for a wail)

could any of these be killing my snails slowly??i also had 6 in 1 point but theres plenty of food all over the tank as i use algae wafers
 
i toke a pic of the shells of the snails that had died (hope no ones thinks im weird or anything lol)

but you can see when the effects started taking place from the first death of the first snail up untill the currently 1 had died about 1 day ago
but heres the pic hope there death could save the last 2 that i have in my 10g tank :(

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hope this helps if at all, you can basically see the shell rotting away with each passing month, the last snail the one labeled 12/22/08 was the one that had the most damage to its shell...

hope anyone could make use of these pics

Also, what do you guys do with the shell once your snails die?? kinda feel weird keeping them around lol
 
What salinity or specific gravity are you bringing the water up to? The species you've got (looks like Pomacea diffusa) usually considered incompatable with fish that need elevated salt content in the water beyond about 0.004sg.

The nitrate is rather high for a tank with snails, although if the reading is accruate it's probably not the culprit. I don't know the range on the kits you're using, but a lot of test kits I've used over the years only have accuracy to close to 40, so readings that appear to be 40 could be >40 on those kits. The amount of copper is small in that fertilizer, so one or two doses I doubt would be the culprit. However, if it's been dosed regularly for a while and the copper concentration is not monitored, that's the sort of thing that would be worth checking on if you plan on keeping more inverts in the tank. Some LFSs will test copper, although the bigger chains tend not to. If you're going to be adding a fertilizer that contains copper and can find a copper test kit for freshwater, that would not be a bad thing to have on hand so you can keep tabs on the concentration in the tank.

Since you were adding a calcium supplement that from my memory is also carbonate based, and the erosion doesn't look like it progressed too fast given how many months went past between the first and last in the pics, it could just be normal wear & tear showing. kH would be worth checking on, but with regular supplements containing CaCO3 it's not likely to be the issue. It's not uncommon even in good water for cases of shell erosion on old growth to be in a more-or-less constant state of gradual decay, since shells do dissolve slowly. Once the protective protein layer is gone and the snails will be constantly redepositing new shell or calcifying tissue as the shell dissolves away very slowly. When snails are transported from one set of conditions into another that is different enough (particularly between extremes of pH), the growth created in the old environment is often subject to erosion under normally acceptable conditions moreso than the new growth.

The shells all show two pronounced growth lines, one about halfway back on the outer whorle and one near the front. Even if the snails were gotten when they were the size indicated by the growth ring further back, that would probably put them at adulthood and mean that you'd had them for a number of months if they were all gotten around the same time. Bearing in mind that P. diffusa isn't especially long-lived in captivity, you may not be seeing anything other than life expectency. 1-1.5 year lifespan is normal for a lot of P. diffusa, especially those kept at higher temperatures. Those in colder temperatures may last 2-3 years, although it's not all that common.


Also, what do you guys do with the shell once your snails die?? kinda feel weird keeping them around lol

I save them when possible; over the years I've accumulated several drawer-fulls of them. I keep them around in part for sentimental reasons but also for the purposes of maintaining a shell collection, since I study these snails somewhat informally on the side of my other work/studies. If you hang onto your shells, you might find use for them in the future. If they're in good enough shape, they're usefull for animals like hermit crabs, but can also be a useful thing to have around if another similarly sized snail experiences a sever shell break and requires a patch job.
 

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