my snail is sick?

today, i notice that my golden mystery snail has either been in his shell, or upside down like he cant roll over.

any ideas of what this could be?

It's not unusual for mystery snails to be inactive for a while. But remember they like conditions (hard water and high pH) that are not ideal for most fish.

my snail has been in the same spot for almost two days and all he does is extend this long tube thing every once in a while (it is so long) when the fish swim by him he moves his little antenna things so i know he is alive but i don't know what to do.

I hope there is a snail expert looking, because my best advice is to do nothing unless you plan on setting up an aquarium specifically for snails. Anything you do to make the snail happier may do the opposite to the fish. Wait a minute; I did think of one thing. Mystery snails lay their eggs outside the water. If your aquarium has a glass top, they need a couple inches of air between the water surface and glass top. There is a small chance the snail could be gravid with eggs, or maybe he/she needs another snail for company. Finally, you could try putting an algae wafer near the snail; most of them need their vegies. That was two or three things, wasn't it?

thanks, there is always space between the water and the top of the tank but he/she has never laid eggs before. i have little wild annoying snails that lay hundreds of eggs a day and i cant get rid of them, but no other mystery snails. and there is no green algae in my tank.

When i lived in Dallas many years ago, I raised enough mystery snails to sell to one of the local aquarium shops. During the last several decades in Phoenix, I can't get mystery snails to live very long. It's probably something in the water, maybe the lack of calcium. I think the people who raise snails for sale on Aquabid use single species aquariums.

As for the other snails, it may be impossible to eliminate all of them, but you can control their population. First, make sure all the food gets eaten by the fish. Next, float a lettuce leaf for a couple of days and nights. By then it should be full of unwanted snails, so toss the whole thing in the garden. Repeat as necessary.

And one more thing. You can lower the pH of the water by tossing in an Indian almond leaf, decorating with Malaysian driftwood, and using an under gravel filter. Snails like a high pH.

i found one thing that gets rid of snails in an instant...two words native fish

. well my tank is already overflowing with baby fish so i don't want to add even more fish. but i have it under control, i have all the little snails in my breeder trap with my two newest babies so that they cant lay eggs all over the tank, and i don't have to stress out the babies and siphon the waste of the bottom, they do that for me :] and i just take a pair of tweezers and pick out the like billion of eggs they lay ever other week, eventually im going to feed them to my uncle's HUGE red devil.(she eats anything).


when i woke up this morning, i mystery snail was on the top of one of my plants, and he hasn't left the plant all day. so that's good. yay!


thanks.

I'm happy that doing nothing worked for you this time. It's always better than doing the wrong thing.

All the snail talk got me to doing some research. Here's a website with everything you ever wanted to know about mystery snails, which are also called apple snails: www.applesnail.net