Miniature snail needs identification

[pinkunicorn]

There's a ton of these little critters in our compost. Or, a ton of shells that I've discovered in my terrariums, since I use the compost for my snails and slugs. But now I managed to catch a live individual. But who is she, I don't know. Does someone recognise this species, perhaps? Location is Amsterdam, Netherlands.

The slugs in the pictures are Deroceras invadens babies, aged from one day to about two weeks depending on size. The biggest in the pics is about 1cm long, for scale. The snail is incredibly tiny! Its shell is transparent and about 8mm long. The snail itself is black/dark brown and about 3-4mm long extended









Sorry the pics aren't the best possible, taken with my phone, plus the cucumber pics were taken last night in artificial light. But you should be able to see something...

[oscar101]

Hi Pinkunicorn,
Hes a Cochlicopa lubrica I have 2 of these myself that i found mating underneith some moss that I was pulling up down the woods

sorry I could only find the 1 to photograph... He was conviniently crawling on the lid of the enclosure which made it very easy.. the other ones hiding in the substrait somwhere I hope....

[pinkunicorn]

Haha, yeah, this size snails hide veeeery well! Thanks a lot for the ID. I'm going to find another one, too, maybe a few if I'm lucky. And then hope for some babies. I can only assume they'll be microscopic... Have you seen any eggs yet? Or, maybe "seen" is the wrong word, without magnifying glass or something at least!

[oscar101]

Hi Pinkunicorn.. No problem ;D, I havent seen any eggs yet, or any almost microscopic beads crawling up the sides of the enclosure ;D Im very hopefull though.. It would be a very interesting experience to see how quicly this species grows and how well they survive in captive conditions. The thing that worries me is how on earth is anyone suposed to contain microscopic babies (assuming they will be microscopic or almost) without putting them in an airtight container

[shaydeesnail]

I had a few of these, the eggs were surprisingly big for their size! But they were still tiny, I would find single eggs dotted around on top of the soil. They never hatched unfortunately, but I imagine they'd be a similar size to Lauria cylindracea, that look like tiny little grains of sand gathered on the cucumber. I keep all my tiny snails in a Ferrero Rocher box, there are no holes in it but I kept live plants in there and made sure to open it as often as I can, for a while a few times a day, they seem to do fine and I haven't had any suffocate

[oscar101]

Hi Shaydeesnail,
thats very interesting. Should we be expecting eggs to be of a smimilar size to Subulina octana eggs then??