Weird snail death

[majolo]

I finally figured out that my gold mystery snail was dead. Here's the story on him. I got him a little while ago and had him in my 55 gal. community. He was crawling around for a while, but soon I noticed my albino bn pleco had a serious problem with the snail. I think maybe because they were the same color? Anyway, the pleco would see the snail, and charge over to him, and tail whip him! Kind of funny, but obviously made life hard on the snail, as he'd spend all his time in his shell. So I transferred the snail to a 10 gal QT hoping that he'd get a chance there. But I never saw him out of his shell again. I'd put an algae wafer next to him every so often, but it wouldn't coax him out. Everyone says when a snail is dead, you know it by the smell, so I'd check that but never got any bad smell from the shell, and also the door was always closed tight, and I read that doesn't happen once the snail is dead. Once when I checked the smell, some water leaked out of the shell, and after that he was floating in the QT.

So today I was doing a water change, had unplugged the equipment, and when I turned it back on the filter wasn't working. So I emptied the QT, and looking at the snail closely, the shell door was still shut tight, but I could see through the translucent shell that it was completely empty! I don't know when he died, or how exactly he wasted away and kept the door on his shell. Just thought I'd share the mystery... (edit: not really looking for advice since the snail's dead already -- otherwise I would have filled out the sticky).

I'm thinking of setting up a 10 gal mainly for pond snails and maybe some shrimp, so maybe I'll give one another try then, if so.

 

[Devilishturtles]

Well...it's sorta a funny story, but I'm sorry your snail died.

I think some snails can just be really tempermental and stuff. When I used to work retail, it seemed like sometimes they'd die left and right, other times none would die at all. But the snail parts coming out of the shell is not pretty, nor does it smell pretty.

Maybe if you tried a black mystery or something totally unrelated in color to the BN Pleco..he might leave it alone?

 

[majolo]

Yeah, fortunately I never had to deal with seeing the dead snail parts, and like I said, I never noticed a smell. Now that I have loaches in the main tank, I won't be putting any more snails in except as food for them, so the pleco doesn't have to worry.