snail

[kurtyboh]

I bought a snail to add to my aquarium the other day... He was teh only thing in it.. i have moved him into a cup on my desk. He hasnt moved in nearly a day, his flap is closed(was about 80% closed when i moved him 12hrs ago) Is this normal or time for a new snail?
the reason he was the only thing in the aquarium is becuase i just finished cycling. and wanted to add the snail first to get him cleaning. He was in the aquarium for 2 days before i noticed him on his shell last night, so i rolled him foot down. then he hadnt moved by the morning so i took him out for more observation and didnt want to foul the tank if he did pass.
my water is .05ppm ammonia, .03ppm nitrite, 25ppm nitrate, no chlorine, and a ph of 6.8

 

[neilanh]

There's a bunch of different opinions on acclimating inverts, but did you do anything to acclimate him to your tank when you bought him?

 

[kurtyboh]

I asked teh guy at the pet store and he said jsut like a fish set the bag in the water for 15-20 mins and should be ok. It was actually about 1/2 an hr before i put him in

 

[neilanh]

My personal experience is that a better acclimation period is required for any fish or inverts going into a tank. There's a few things you're acclimating for, 1) temperature, 2) pH/kH differences.

Floating the bag for a while is a good idea to slowly get the temperature inside the bag to match what's in the tank so your new critters don't get shocked by a large temperature change.

The other part is to try to match the water parameters slowly over time for the same type of reason, to not shock your critters.

There's a few ways you can do this. Open the bag while it's floating, and add a 1/4 cup or so of water from your tank into the bag. This will slowly mix the different water sources until what's in the bag is diluted down (or up) to match whta you have in the tank.

The other way is called the drip method, and is the one I use. I use a tea pitcher, actually, and dump (gently) the water and the new critters from the store into the pitcher. Then, using regular airline, I tie a knot in it to limit the flow to a few drips per second and allow that to drip into the pitcher with the new guy. I do this for at least an hour to slowly acclimate them before placing them into my tank.

I'm not a snail expert, so maybe this behavior is indicative of something else and hopefully someone with experience will chime in, but this seems to me at least to be a potential cause.

 

[mgamer20o0]

what kind of snail and does it smell?

 

[kurtyboh]

I dont know what type of snail.... i'll get a picture up shortly. He's the smallest snail the pet store had. It's supposedly fully grown and is about the size of the tip of my thumb.
but there is no smell coming from him

 

[dkpate]

If it's a mystery snail, sometimes they go dormant for a few days. They do take air from the surface so he needs to be able to access that. They also have gills, so I hope you have some way of putting air in the cup for him. Are you feeding him?
I have a big one, (golfball size) and I feed her one algae wafer every night, since she is usually dormant during the day.