Algae? Killing my Snails

[snailarious]

The two remaining Apersa babies I had were healthy... until this morning. They both had bad shell growth (they wouldn't eat cuttlebone and their shells were flaky/thin) but were recovering after I started dusting their food with a calcium/phosphorous supplement and otherwise appeared healthy and active.

I built a larger terrarium for them and I'm in the process of planting it. The bulb is just a florescent bulb so I moved them partially under it, thinking that the light might help with the shell growth (which is why I built the new terrarium in the first place). They still had space to hide if they didn't like it. When I woke up the next morning the smaller snail was dead, and his head/tentacles had turned a sickly green color.

The last snail looks fine, so I bathed him thoroughly in warm water and moved him into a tupperware container with some washed sphagnum for now. What could have killed the other? Algae? Or some sort of bacterial infection?

[pinkunicorn]

I'm sorry. I feel you, I also think one of my old aspersas passed on today.

It's difficult to say what happened when a previously healthy snail gets ill and dies. I'm suspecting a lot of things, lack of sunlight among the latest suspicions like you've thought as well, although H.aspersa is widely studied and used as a lab animal, so I'm pretty sure their requirement of UV light would be known if that was the cause. Fungus infection is possible, but normally snails can fight those off unless very serious. Any microorganism getting under the skin via a scratch can cause illness and death eventually. I think my snail was old (only one of the four originals was still growing shell when I adopted them) but yours are young, so simple old age can't be the reason. I've had several of my slug babes die in the past week (like 7 slugs in total) so I'm thinking what went wrong. But the others are thriving so it may not be the environment. Maybe there was something in the food you didn't see, bacteria for example. Sometimes even washing doesn't get it off.

Sorry I can't give more than more guesses. I hope your other snails keep thriving.

[inky]

I've read about it and it seems that land snails are OK with algae. Not like I'd feed it to them due to the bacteria that's in fish tanks. I'm sorry for your loss, too. It might have been bad bacteria, like pinkunicorn said. I'd never feed snails algae unless they were aquatic snails, like my ramshorn snails. Are you sure they were young? I had one of my snails go a few months ago due to deep retraction. I had got him from the wild in winter so they probably laid eggs and was dying of old age. It's hard to determine the age of a snail, unless you have had it born in captivity.

I would probably stay away from algae as the snails can eat it and even though it's apparently harmless, it may have bacteria in it and apparently fish tanks have bad bacteria in it.

[oscar101]

Their are many different types of algea. Not all algea grows under water. many species of tree snail require algea and wont eat much else. Some species live of algea entirely.. Tropidophora Cuveriana for example. Algea can grow on dead branches and even on the bark of live trees. Personaly I doubt algea is the cause of death as in the wild, snails are constantly comming into contact with algea. Even mushrooms have algea growing on them, though this form of algea is microscopic. Helix Aspersa produce a green slime when they have came into contact with something that harms their skin...salt, harmfull chemicals, strong alcohols etc.

[snailarious]

Jul 12, 2012 3:50:39 GMT inky said:

Are you sure they were young?

This one was raised by me, but I have no idea what age the original was.

Jul 12, 2012 22:12:12 GMT oscar101 said:

Helix Aspersa produce a green slime when they have came into contact with something that harms their skin...salt, harmfull chemicals, strong alcohols etc.

That's interesting. When I saw the green slime algae or bacteria came to mind but this makes more sense. I only used distilled water and wash the food though... I wonder what it could have been.