Bad Shell Growth Issue, need advice...

[feelahthetigress]

Hey guys, I've got a bit of an issue. I probably should've looked into this sooner, but I've been incredibly busy having gone back to college, so I haven't thought about it much. Here's some pics:

farm3.staticflickr.com/2889/12242862355_bc577b81ea_b.jpg

farm6.staticflickr.com/5525/12243445236_e6c7f942a1_b.jpg

Basically, as you can see, there's some pretty bad, uneven shell growth on this one. Many of my current snails were raised from babies (as my older ones got too old and died) and so a lot of them have this uneven shell growth (though some of them look much better than others). The snail I chose to picture is rather representative of the issue. I've had a couple deaths in the past couple months, but still have about 10-15 snails total. They are active and feed readily, and their bodies look healthy (not thin or anything). Anyway, I'm not really sure what's wrong. I feed them an assortment of veggies (although I've been lazy the past month or so and have been relying mainly on carrots, and rutabagas, plus bits of whatever vegetable we have been eating in our own recipes - recently they have gotten some tomato and apple). They have a permanent source of calcium in the tank in the form of a couple calcium blocks (powdered calcium carbonate that's been mixed with water and then baked until solid, but still somewhat soft). They seem to eat the calcium because it gets reduced in size and appears to have many bite/gnaw marks in it. I have some fish flakes, but I've been forgetting to actually give it to them recently (college school-work and all).

Anyway, if anyone has an ideas of what's wrong, please let me know. I have a theory that maybe they are not getting enough vitamin D. Due to the situation of this apartment, we basically get no sunlight. I know the fish flakes have a small amount of added vitamin D, and if necessary, I could get some human calcium pills with added vitamin D and give them that. What do you guys think?

I've recently (just today) decided to try baking some fish flakes into some calcium blocks to see if that can stay in the tank permanently and not go moldy like fish flakes normally do (then they'd last longer and my forgetting to serve them won't be such an issue). We'll see how that works out. The snails seem interested in eating it from my brief observation of them.

[starcrazy19]

I would go with reptile calcium/vitamin mix rather than human stuff. The human calcium tabs tend to have sweetners and stuff in that you don't really want to be bothering with. The reptile stuff is good, I dust snails food with it or mix into mushy stuff like sweet potato mash or grated courgette every now and then You could try providing different sources of calcium, cuttlefish, eggshells, oystershell, or chicken mash.

I have no idea if snails NEED significant vitamin D, it does play an important role in calcium absorption in humans but it would be unrealistic to expect them to metabolise it from sunlight really since they would see very little daylight in the wild. They do eat all sorts of things though, I believe vitamin D is in mushrooms meat and some veg, which they might well find in the wild.

The snail in your pic look fullgrown so their shells won't improve now, but if you have younger ones with this issue, you should hopefully notice their new shell growth improving

www.vetark.co.uk/pages/Nutrobal-for-reptiles.aspx

Anything similar to that should have good levels of D and other vit/mins. Aswell as calcium of course Make sure they have access to non-enriched calcium sources as well though.

[feelahthetigress]

Feb 2, 2014 15:26:59 GMT starcrazy19 said:

I would go with reptile calcium/vitamin mix rather than human stuff. The human calcium tabs tend to have sweetners and stuff in that you don't really want to be bothering with. The reptile stuff is good, I dust snails food with it or mix into mushy stuff like sweet potato mash or grated courgette every now and then You could try providing different sources of calcium, cuttlefish, eggshells, oystershell, or chicken mash.

I have no idea if snails NEED significant vitamin D, it does play an important role in calcium absorption in humans but it would be unrealistic to expect them to metabolise it from sunlight really since they would see very little daylight in the wild. They do eat all sorts of things though, I believe vitamin D is in mushrooms meat and some veg, which they might well find in the wild.

The snail in your pic look fullgrown so their shells won't improve now, but if you have younger ones with this issue, you should hopefully notice their new shell growth improving

www.vetark.co.uk/pages/Nutrobal-for-reptiles.aspx

Anything similar to that should have good levels of D and other vit/mins. Aswell as calcium of course Make sure they have access to non-enriched calcium sources as well though.

Do you think the Vitamin D added to fish flakes would be sufficient? Those calcium blocks with fish flakes in them that I made were pretty much demolished overnight, so clearly the snails liked what they were tasting (and I already have them, so that'd save some money...). They haven't gone moldy yet (of course it's only been one night).

Actually, while the bigger ones don't look too good, I do have some babies in there (bigger than hatchlings but not large yet), and they have beautiful shells. I guess what that means is that there was a point much earlier where something was off in the older snails' nutrition, but maybe I've already inadvertently solved the issue... Either way, I'm going to keep feeding them fish flakes more regularly and keep on eye on their growth and see how they do. I'm also planning to pay better attention to varying their diet. If the babies start looking bad, I'll try out the reptile vitamins.