UVA, UVB, Its use or lack of ?????

[ceiron]

hello folks,
i keep my snails in a glass tank this effectively screens out the uvb and most uva, in the wild snaisl would probably reciece a little uvb and a bit of uva, would need habitat research to get any more info (anyoen want to sponsor me doing this, feel free lol)
anyhows was wondering if anyone has experimented with uv tubes in the tanks, i was thinking of the low level reptisun's, the reptisun 2.0 but perhaps also tryign this with the reptisun 5.0 too.
(not the cheapest of bulbs though)
anyone else tried this ?
or even thought about this

if i can ever get a job, taking the mick but diff story.
i would liek t otry this, preffarble with tigers and margies but fulica to start with as any immediate effects would be noticable a lot quicker, if any effects :S

[Paul]

I have looked into this in part, I assume you have read the thread about sunlight.

The next thing on my equipment list is to get a UV tube. I'm not sure whether this is necessary but I am gonna use it to see if seasonal changes encourages breeding. I'd done a test with a normal spot-lamp, it helped activity on the hours it was off, I think it made day and night much clearer for the snails.

And

Hodasi (1982) showed that natural photoperiodism favours maximum egg production output in giant snails.

One of the few bits of environment related info regarding snails I have seen.

I'm nearly up to that point, my last tank is gonna bought later this week (for my birthday a few weeks ago!). Then it is UV time

I'll keep you posted.

paul

[ceiron]

nope, didnt see the sunlight thead.lol
will go read it now and then feel stupid.

[Arno]

Your last tank,Paul,or you sure of that?......hehe
I'll follow the UV test with interest....

[Cim]

I didn't find the message about sunlight...

But i can say that my snails seems to like sunshine a lot!

I put their cages in sunlight now when it's warm outside without a lid but with net on. If they are sleeping, they wake up pretty soon and starts crawling around and starts to eat and they are very active. They have shadow too.

I think I will try some UVA-UVB light for them in the winter as they responded well to the direct sunlight. I guess they get plenty of sun in Africa! ;D Probably it's enough with the 2.0 light, but i don't think the stronger lights will hurt them...

[Deleted]

where can u get a UV thingy is it expensive?

[ceiron]

from most eptshops, or reptile ones at least.

looking at around 40 quid for the starter and tube and the tube needs replacing every 6 months.

[Deleted]

thats so expensive it cant be worth it unless u have a really really really rare species u wanna breed and u wud get the money back from selling the babies

[ceiron]

erm, actually if it proves to be in the best interest of the animal its so worth it.

i aspire to the ebst animal welfare and to be blunt if good animal wlefare costs money then it costs and if i cant afford it then i owuldnt keep the animal.

in the reptile world i have seen far too many cases of people doing it the vheaper route and suffering in the long run.

[Deleted]

yeh but surely snails dont desperately need anything that fancy, although it is nice to pamper them

[ceiron]

how do you know, theres been no proper research into it.

all i know is, in the wild they get uvb and in captivity they dont and we are struggling to breed and keep alive alot of snail species in captivity that seem ok in the wild, so to me we are doing soemthing wrong.

so until i have exhausted these options we wont know will we.

[Deleted]

why cant UVB get into our tanks?

[ceiron]

sorry if i seemed rude earlier, bit stessed today.

but most tanks are glass or plastic and uv cant penetrate glass and about 95 -99 % is filtered out by plastic.

50 - 60% is filtered out my mesh also.

so they gain no benifit from it.

also most are indoors, so the glass widnows block it all out anyways.

even in the wild they would get a fairly high amount.

[Arno]

This about UV:UVA can go through glass but UVB can't......

[Paul]

I agree Ceiron, it needs looking into. My next purchase is a UV set up, but I ain't got the cash yet. Got my last tank though and I have just bought a load of coir. So UV here we come. I suspect it was vitamin D deficiency that caused your shell problems. And I agree that although snails will be mostly inactive during the day, in humid conditions they do still move around in daylight and would get some natural sunlight.

Perspex lets more UV through than glass so I'm gonna go for perspex/plastic lids. I tested the penetration using a UV light. It diffuses it but it does get through.

I've had 2 fulica and 1 stunted panthera die from that deep retraction/not eating properly. And I have 1 dimidiata baby like that now. All the others are fine and there's been no larger snails affected at all. An infection or illness would have spread faster and one of the snails is from another tank. I am extremely careful about washing my hands between tanks coz I wondered if it is an infection. I thought it was genetic because 2 fulicas went down. I now suspect it is either weak genes in general or a lack of something that some snails are more sensitive to. And that something may just be sunlight.

[ceiron]

for the perspex glass thing, been tested with a uvb meter accurately.

uvguide.co.uk/uvinnature.htm

good read, done by a friend

[Paul]

I've read right through that website, I was very impressed by it. Very thorough and as scientific an approach as is possible for hobbyists. And I've learned a hell of a lot.

I noticed some particularly interesting points:

"Vitamin D3 is a substance that is toxic in large amounts."

So, we need to be careful here. We don't wish to supplement them to much. I am gonna go for a low power approach. If UV helps then some has to be better than none. And if not, the snails won't be harmed.

Certain species, however, do not seem able to utilise vitamin D3 effectively from their diet. This may be because in the wild, their diets are particularly low in vitamin D3 and they are adapted to rely almost entirely upon UVB photobiosynthesis for this vitamin. Vegetarian lizards might be expected to fall into this category, since plants contain predominantly vitamin D2, which is not thought to be utilised by reptiles

If snails actually need Vitamin D3 and the above is also true for them, supplying them with dietary supplements, may not be enough. However, it is possible that the snails would benefit from increased amounts of D2. This also needs investigating.

Rainforest species such as some types of chameleon naturally avoid any such high exposure. They need UVB, but at much lower levels. Their more sensitive skins manufacture all the vitamin D3 which they need from brief periods of basking early and late in the day, and the diffused and reflected ultraviolet light permeating the rainforest shade......

....and the authors suggest that a low level of UVB (a gradient between 15-33uW/cm² as measured with a Solarmeter 6.2) supplied for 12 hours a day is optimal. High levels are seen to be harmful.

Ok, so here is my thoughts on what I may intially aim for.

I think we are looking at a maximum of 30-40uW/cm² at the top of the tank. My tanks are 15 inches deep with 4 inches of soil and I would probably fit a lamp 3-4 inches above the lid. Looking at what kind of lids I can use that will allow UV through the best are:

"2mm Clear UV-Transmitting Plexiglas Acrylic Sheets (C & A Building Plastics) and 10-year-old sheets of a twin-walled acrylic now sold as Plexiglas Alltop (Roehm) used to roof several others proved to have excellent UVB transmission. Losses of only around 20% were recorded with the acrylic sheeting and 30-40% with the twin-walled acrylic."

Choosing the first one, would mean a 20% loss. So I need to choose a bulb that outputs about 30-40uW/cm² at 4 inches. An Exo Terra Repti-Glo 5.0 seems perfect. At ground level the snails will receive a mere 12uW/cm². That is obviously a 3rd of what is suggested as rainforest light, but snails are generally ground dwellers and we're not sure where the light-readings were taken, right at the forst floor would be quite low I imagine. And it falls well inside our conservative safe levels, with the exception at the very top, which just peaks over it.

I will span two tanks, at one end of both, so they can get away from it. And I'll provide plenty of hiding places as usual.

One last thing to mention is that a reflector can roughly double the output of a tube, so it can be used to boost fading lamps or would mean you could choose a lower power tube like the GE Reptigrow.

The study does mention you can't compare them really but these 2 seem reasonable choices I think based on what we know.

[ceiron]

you were bored last night, been working with rob for the last 8 months looking into this stuff and you read it all in a night.lol

typical.

good points there though.

the d3 thing though, its very hard to overdose as the body will jsut pass excess out and its only really a problem if you give them artificial d3, they can jsut stop producing if it gets to high amopunts even if they still subject to uvb.

never thought i would see a use for a reptiglo tube though.lol

they are apnts for anythign other then low uv species.lol

[alexc1981]

Just spotted this on ebay for £13.50. There are a few others on there for less than £40.

cgi.ebay.co.uk/reptiglo-5-0-fluorescent-tube-15-VIVARIUMS-REPTILES_W0QQitemZ7715913190QQcategoryZ1285QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem