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Unhappy snails (apple & nerite)

7K views 15 replies 4 participants last post by  shunyata 
#1 ·
My snails are not doing so well. They are very inactive and some of my apple snails have passed on. I have 5 nerite snails, 4 apple snails and 1 assassin snail. I also have a mussel, an african dwarf frog, and a betta which show no signs of stress.

The apple snails are laying around with their shells half-closed. When Ii pick them up they close their doors slowly. I sometimes find a nerite on its back not making any attempt to right itself. Some of the nerites are spending more time above the water line than usual.

Here is what I've already tried:

I thought the issue was PH related because the PH kept dropping to 6.4. I thought that a large stone in my tank, possibly gypsum, was affecting PH. So I replaced it with the more inert quartz for decorations. I also removed a moss ball that, when tested in a separate container, seemed to cause the PH to drop.

I was using Seachem's Neutral Buffer at the time. So I switched to using Prime to treat my tap water and brought the PH up over a few weeks via water changes. Now the PH matches the tap water and has been stable at 7.6 for a couple months.

The PH changes could explain why the original apple snails died. But the 4 current apple snails have only been in the tank for a week when PH has been stable. They were active the first few days, but have since declined.

I thought temp might be an issue as I read apple snails will live much longer at colder temperatures. So I moved the tank from 78F to 74F. Since they slowed down even more after that, I raised the temp up to 76F.

About a month ago I switched out the media in the canister filter to a more porous media. To avoid excessive cycling, I kept some of the old media in with the new media. This left no room for carbon, but I was advised that it's good to occasionally run the system without carbon.

I do regular water changes and clean out the canister filter about once a month. This tank has duckweed in it and the nice side effect is that Nitrates always test low. I also had the lfs test my water to make sure my kit hasn't expired. Current test results:

PH: 7.6
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrites: 0ppm
Nitrates: 5ppm

Tank is planted: banana plants, dwarf hair grass, red tiger lotus, anubis, corkscrew val, & echinodorus vesuvius. There were some other plants in the tank that I recently removed because of visual over crowding. Those lotus get big!

I have ordered a copper test kit just in case that is somehow an issue. I also removed the quartz crystals and a small buddha statue (in case they are leaching something) as of last night.

Any ideas on what else I can/should check?
 
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#3 ·
I don't know but I have an Assassin snail in each of my tanks with my Apple snails and they pretty much ignore each other. The Assassin goes after the much smaller Ramshorns and the Apple snails have traveled right over the Assassin as though giving it a message. Not sure what the problem is here with these snails though.

OP I know that Apple snails go into a very inactive period that can last months from my understanding. Sort of like Hibernating. Could that be what you are seeing?
 
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#6 ·
I'm not getting your situation. A moss ball dropped the pH? Test the KH and GH first.
 
#7 ·
I'm not sure if it was the moss ball itself, or if the moss ball was holding onto excess buffer. The PH issue was solved by removing the moss ball and lots of water changes without the buffer. PH has been stable a couple months, but my snails are still dying off.

I did order a Carbonate Hardness test as well, so I'll check that as soon as they arrive.
 
#8 ·
The shells never eroded though? How is the mussel? I'm surprised you have a mussel possibly doing fine. I'll think of other possibilities. We can rule out possible contaminants since the fish is absolutely fine. I do know though that snails are extremely sensitive to heavy metals.
 
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#11 ·
It's not the lighting. Are they active at night at all? Try to increase your pH to 8.0-8.4. Gotta separate them though so the betta will not be compromised.

If you have to check for heavy metals, have a water company conduct the test and send you the report. I'll enlist the help of my friend to see which one would be troublesome for the snails. I do know this though, with hard alkaline water, heavy metals tend to be less toxic. It's why I said to increase the pH a notch to see if it makes any difference.
 
#12 ·
When I checked on them today, I found two more dead (1 apple, 1 nerite). The others still smell ok, though a couple seem to have lost the ability to close their trapdoors. Of the 7 snails left, 5 have not moved at all in at least 4 days.

For testing with the water company, do you mean send them my aquarium water? Or are we talking about requesting a report of their supply?

I'm considering putting all the snails into quarantine. My reasoning is to get them into fresh water; away from any contaminants that may still be in the tank. Then I could also raise the PH without affecting anything else.
 
#13 ·
Request report about tap water. I'm baffled why your snails are dying while your fish is fine. How's the mussel yet?
 
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#15 ·
I'll look into the report. Mussel is still good.

It's not salty at all, is it? Snails don't like salt.
Shouldn't be. I checked with a refractometer and it shows it as 0ppt or 1.00 salinity. Though its possible...

In the past I have fed the tank Azoo's jellyfish food. I thought it would be good for the mussel and didn't even realize it had salt. I just checked it: 22ppt! Water changes may have made it undetectable now, but it may have been too high before. Lesson learned: no more jelly food for the mussel!

However, I understand that nerite snails can easily tolerate salt as they switch between fresh and marine waters in the wild.
 
#16 ·
Lost two more today: 1 apple, 1 nerite. Three are still incapacitated (2 apple, 1 nerite), while two (nerites) are active. I'm starting to hope whatever it was is no longer an issue since two are active again. But I also fear it is too late for the three that are inactive.
 
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