Nutrient Deficiency in Pond Snails?

[dskidmore]

My pond snail population was getting out of hand in my 2.5 gallon, so I tapered off feeding them. They seem to be able to maintain the population just fine on algae, but their shells turned white. I started feeding bits of algae wafers again, and the leading edge of the shells is brown now. (Kinda leaves them with a neat striped effect, but I don't think it's good for them, the white part seems to be more fragile, and occasionally I'll see one with a hole in his shell.)

Is there something just missing from algae, or is there some way I should adjust my fert balance for this tank? I'd rather maintain a smaller, but healthy population.

 

[Devilishturtles]

I'm no snail expert, but isn't that sign of calcium deficiency? Perhaps try adding some cuttlebone to the tank for the snails to graze on.

 

[QTOFFER]

Sounds like the calcium deficiency I've noticed whenever I've tried keeping snails. You should test your water for general hardness (gH) - a measure of dissolved calcium and magnesium in the water. I'd guess that your water is very soft (very low gH) like mine.

I asked a similar question in this thread:
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/viewtopic.php?t=101983 and received some excellent advice on keeping my snails happy.

 

[dskidmore]

I think my test kit at work was testing KH, and the water wasn't soft according to that. I'll have to bring in my GH kit from home and test.

Further complicated by the fact that I just moved the tank to my new work location, so the water may be a bit diffrent, but most every town around here gets water from the lake, so it's all similar. (Except my home in the city that gets water from a smaller lake during the summer.)

 

[dskidmore]

I added cuttlebone, it's been months now, and the cuttlebone has still not much dimminshed. Snail shells still white. More ideas?