Might my snail be sick?

[scarral]

I have two GALS (probably a. Fulica) tha were born at the end of may. There was always one that was noticeably fatter than the other one. I put a couple of plastic containers for them to hide in. One day the smaller started sleeping inside one of those, and the larger decided to do the same, blocking the way out so that the smaller couldn't come out. The bigger seems to have every day woken up, crawled aroind, eaten and returned to thr blocking exit position before the smaller one even woke up at all. It went like this for a couple of days, until I decided to replace these containers for a plastic plant pot, so that if both decide to sleep in it, they can still go out independently. I also decided to take the smaller one out of the bottom of this small container (which was no easy task) because I had the inpression that it wouldn't be able to turn around anYmore. Well, it basically crawled aroud the walls of the tank for a couple of days, not getting very far at all, and also not closing in to where the food usually is. I figured it did't eat much while "trapped" in there. Since then I've decided to wake it up every evening when he big one wakes up, and put it on top of a cucumber to encourage it to eat. But since I took the small one out of the small container it looks much smaller than the other one. Before I had to see them side by side to be able to identify them, now this is not necessary. The small one still seems rather lethargic. I thought it might be sick or have some bug or parasite, so I bathed it a couple of times. Will it catch up in growth eventually? Is there anything else I can do to help it?

[leila]

its not unusual for two young snails (even if theyre siblings) to be quite different in size, so you shouldnt worry about that too much. But it might be possible that the bigger one is kind of bullying the smaller one, if he was really sick he probably wouldnt even come out of his shell.

if you really think its a big problem maybe you could separate them at feeding time, or for longer periods till the little guy bulks up and maybe gains some confidence

[PennyFarthing]

We had a similar thing with Penny and Farthing. I don't know if you'd call it purposeful bullying, but Farthing is at least three months younger than Penny and I think her presence frightened him. He rarely attempted to eat before we moved him to another tank and spent most of his time hiding. If Penny went anywhere near him he'd go up inside his shell, sometimes blowing bubbles. Of course, now that we keep them apart for a different reason, they seem to actually want to be together...

[shaydeesnail]

I have 3 sibling snails, two are almost the same size and one is less than half the size, even though they have the same amount of whorls. He still eats and is active. I wouldn't worry about the size difference as it is common, but keep an eye out for inactivity and lack of appetite.