Where are my snail experts? Help!

[Dsudnick]

I just bought 6 Nerite Snails. One of them hadn’t moved for 3-4 days and appeared to be open and wouldn’t close until I touched it and then it would SLOWLY close but not fully. So I went to return it and the fish store said it was still alive.

I swapped it for another snail and now a week has gone by a DIFFERENT snail is doing the same thing. Has not moved for 3-4 maybe even 5 days. During that 5 day span he had gotten flipped upside down and remained half open and kind of sticking out of the shell so I picked it up and touched it and it move ever so slightly.

What is going on? Do they normally do that, is it sick?

Water Temp stays between 78-80 degrees.

PH: 7
Ammonia: 0 ppm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: I do a 1/4 - 1/3 water chance once it’s over 20-30 ppm (usually) every 7-10 days

[ADsnail]

Yeah, they do that. Sometimes there are casualties among an otherwise healthy group. As to why...all I can say is, some make it and some don't. A snail that persistently flips upside down despite you repeatedly righting it may be headed for the snail afterlife.

They can be a mystery to figure out. You may have one that acts like that for a week, then suddenly it snaps out of the coma and starts behaving normally. Another may slam shut for a day and that's it...>pfft< gone immediately. I once had one that disappeared and I figured it crawled off to die in some deep corner. A month later, deep vacuuming unearthed it and it began to move around and eat. It's now totally normal. IDK what that was about.

The conventional advice is that when it hangs out or stays shut it will die and start to emit a ferocious stink - "you'll know it's dead by the smell". But that hasn't been true in my tanks. When they die here there's no smell at all. Eventually, when moved, the foot floats off to reveal a shell full of (non-smelly) dust, which floats around and makes me glad I do weekly water changes.

To sum up, who knows? Enjoy your living snails, sniff for gross dead snails, get more when you don't have enough. Hope this helps.

[RedGingerRoot]

That actually helped me. My 8yr old daughter came home with a Betta back in April, fast forward to today, and we now have 2 5 gallon tanks, each has a divider because there are now 4 betta’s and a 30 gallon tank that has our only surviving nerite snail out of 4.
I went and bought them, 1 for each 5 gallon tank (before we needed to divid the tanks), and 2 for the 30 gallon.
The smallest one was initially put into the tank with the female betta, but very quickly made his way up and onto the top of the lid of the aquarium so I moved him into the bottom of the 30 gallon tank and it disappeared that afternoon. Over the course of about 4 weeks, the larger nerites all flipped and closed up. When I caught them flipped over on their backs, I would flip them back. One didn’t move for a few days, so I got a little plastic bowl and filled it with water from the tanks and put it inside to be alone. It seemed to open up and would poop, but then stopped moving. The 2nd did the same and by the 3rd, I was like oh well. I was doing a deep clean and took the castle out and asked my daughter to clean of and out and she found the missing snail. My daughter had already named it Turbo and decided it was a boy. I was really shocked. I would check the castle weekly when doing water tests and he was definitely alive. He would move from tower to tower inside the castle.
We have no question about him living now as he finally made his way out of the castle after weeks of isolation and making his presence known in the tank. ��*♀️
Snails I guess are a hit and miss sometimes.

[Autumnsky]

If it's a newer tank there may not be much for them to eat.

[ADsnail]

There are several reasons why nerites leave the water. It's a natural behavior; they don't spend all their time under water. They're also curious and like to explore everywhere. Sometimes it's because they don't like they water parameters. Sometimes it's because they don't have enough food.

As Autumnsky mentioned, not enough algae buildup can make nerites resort to different behavior. Leaving the water to sleep. Closing down until food becomes available. If you don't have any supplemental food yet, a good sinking pellet variety with algae tabs will help them stay healthy. Snails have a sense of smell, so *if you feed it, they will come*.

Sometimes they also go above the water line for a long nap after a big meal. Mine have been up there all day, after a big feed last night. They are nocturnal, so I expect they'll be racking up the mileage again tonight.