Snail Questions

[Kerrinne]

Does anyone have a Black Mystery Snail and a Golden Apple Snail together? I had mine together and they did fine for a long time. All of the sudden, the black mystery is always seeking out the golden apple and sucking onto his shell. He won't let go of him, and it's too hard for the golden to move around to get food and go to the surface and what not. Today, it looked like the black mystery had cracked the golden snail's shell a little. I have separated them permanently. Is this behaviour normal? Why would they be doing this? The golden one is a male (my momma is in the betta tank). TIA

 

[QTOFFER]

A few years ago, I kept a small terrarium housing two colorful land snails that I found in my yard. I fed them fresh fruits and vegetables and all was well for a while. Then one of the snails started climbing on the other snail's shell. I quickly realizd that the aggressor snail was slowly eating away at his tankmate's shell, so I released them both. At the time, I thought that perhaps the diet I was providing them was missing some essential minerals that one snail was attempting to obtain by eating his friend's shell. What are you feeding your snails and what is the KH? Don't know if this will help.

 

[Kerrinne]

I feed them Hikari Tropical Algae Wafers and TetraMin Variety Wafers. The KH in my tanks are always around 100 ppm.

 

[Kerrinne]

Will my golden apple's shell be able to heal? Or will he die from this crack?

 

[QTOFFER]

You'd think that commercial foods would contain a balanced mixture of minerals. I'm curious about the effect of soft acidic water, since I am planning to keep some ramshorn snails in my pH=6.8, GH/KH = 50 ppm tank.

From what I've read, the snail can recalcify a small breach in its shell. It's usually not lethal, but this snail won't be winning any fashion awards in the future.
This link has more than you would ever want to know about apple snails:

http://www.applesnail.net/content/various/snail_disease.php

 

[Kerrinne]

Thanks QTOFFER. This guy is one of my favorites of my snails. He looks lonely in the 10 gal now, but that will change once I have some fish to QT. And he is much safer in there (and the tank has some algae in it). Thanks for the link.

What does everyone else feed their snails if you feed them anything at all?