New margies with shell damage, how worried should I be?

[starcrazy19]

I just picked up a group of margies from the rescue last week, (and one fulica) they're settling in well but all of them have some degree of poor shell growth and/or damage. You can see where they've grown well and been cared for properly up to the same point and then the bad shell growth starts, on all of them - so either their owner or conditions changed at that point and they eventually ended up at the reptile rescue in a plastic box with no heating or anything.
They're lovely snails, seem quite healthy, unusual colours and I did wonder when I saw them if anyone here might recognise them as their own sold-on babies since I'm sure I've seen similar young margies for sale on here.
Anyway I'm worried about a couple of them as I've never seen such bad shell growth and I'm concerned if the smaller ones will be able to continue growing normally, and if the full-grown ones will be okay despite their malformed shells. Here are a few pictures -

Having their first dinner:





Babies:





Adult with the worst damage:





You can see that on most of them, they've had real trouble sealing the suture along the edges of their new growth; the final couple pics, her shell all along the inside edge is a mess and her mantle often bulges out really badly, although I haven't managed to get a picture of that. It's like some of them just stopped growing new growth along the suture and then had to patch it up with scar tissue to cover the exposed mantle. She's also got the end of her shell broken off and it looks a bit gammy. She's definitely not as lively as the others. Should I be worried about her and is there anything that can be done at this point?

[muddydragon]

They're lovely poor things!
It's difficult to recognise babies you've sold , but its possible the white skinned babies could be from one of my lot (or their decedents or relatives) but i sincerely hope not! people i sell to seem to know whats going on, but you can never really tell i suppose.

When i got my rescue margie watson (sadly no longer with me) he had the exact same problems he was kept without a heatmat and i think the lack of proper heating seems to reduce their ability to heal shell damage. But he grew normally again when given proper conditions and was the parent of the guy you see in my picture .

i'ld say proper heating good food especially those high in vitamin D and as many different calcium sources as possible are key. Also try not to handle too much, repair growth tends to be very fragile and damage to it causes it to rough up even worse (like you see there). My guess is that they got damaged by the suture by being picked up too roughly and damage there is much harder for snails to repair, especially if redamaged.

I'ld give the broken shell tip a clean with some water and a toothbrush but usually a broken tip isn't a problem as they seal off older sections, but cleaning it will let you get a better look at it and also you dont know what sort of substrate they may have been in.

Well done for rescuing them!

[morningcoffee]

Hi starcrazy,

Congrats on rescuing these guys, I'm sure they will have a happier life with you

As for the shells, the growth does look pretty bad but I'm not sure there's anything major you can do now that the shells have already suffered such poor growth. Obviously they should have plenty of calcium available and a varied diet, which I'm sure you would already provide anyway
In humans, vitamin D aids calcium absorption - I'm not sure if this is totally the same in snails but it can't hurt to provide them some foods rich in vitamin D. Eggs (particularly egg yolks) have good levels of vitamin D. Something else you can do is to put fresh mushrooms upside down (gills up) outside in direct sunlight for a few hours. They will absorb vitamin D and become far richer in the vitamin! Sounds strange but apparently it works

EDIT :: muddy beat me to it while I was writing my post XD

[starcrazy19]

Thanks guys, totally makes sense about the heat since they weren't in a heated tank when I got them - they seem to be quite happy in my warm tank so hopefully that'll give them the best chance to get better. I'll try them with some eggs, and definitely gonna do that mushroom thing aswell! They seem to like mushrooms already. They've got cuttle, limestone flour & oystershell so I'll keep giving them lots of varied things to eat and hopefully they'll know what's good for them. Always loved the look of margies, yours on the classifieds pages are always so gorgeous muddy but I resisted getting any since I had a ton of retics at that point, so really pleased I could make room for them

[shaydeesnail]

I keep my margies on a heat mat and they have calcium and varied food but all three from one clutch had the same shell deformity. As of yet I haven't found a way to fix it- I've fixed the shell of a tiger with the same type of growth but the missing growth isn't where the new shell attaches to the old. I unfortunately lost two of the three margies and while inspecting their empty shells it appears that there is a lot of rough shell growth on the inside, and I wonder if this affects them. I have unrelated margies kept in the same tank as my bad shelled one, so I think that this is likely a genetic issue. Hope they are happy and healthy dispite their shells!

[starcrazy19]

Thanks shaydee! Perhaps it's something they're more susceptible to, like a genetic weakness or something - I'm sure these guys have been poorly cared for so they probably never had a chance to grow normally from that point. They're all doing really well though, especially the three small ones - they've started growing again, but I can't really tell yet if the suture is going to go back to normal. They're all really active and eating and seem happy with the tank they're in anyways, here is a picture of them joining in the standard saturday night snail party. One of the tigers I got from you is in there too shaydee!

[muddydragon]

Glass to hear they're doing well, and what a lovely tank! I'm sure they're well spoiled!