Bright yellow mucus and yellow foot edge. Disease?

[brumin]

Hello everyone,
This is my first post on this forum. I've been reading threads for a while now on this forum  (it really was a great helper!) , but I have an issue I can't find an answer to anywhere on this forum nor the internet and so decided to call for your help!
I have 6 Cornu Aspersum snails (a.k.a. Helix aspersa Muller / Brown garden snail). I will try to give as much information as I can.
5 of them have these symptoms:

• They give very bright (street worker vest's bright) yellow/greenish mucus when physically irritated (for example when I take the snail);
  
• The edge of foot has yellow tone to it (I don't know if it's related to yellow mucus, probably is. The tone is a bit more intense than seen in the picture). Normally these snails are simply gray or gray/brown;

Other information:

• They are about 4 months old;

• They seem to be normally active though;
• Two of them mated recently. One of them seems a bit swollen (the inner part around lip, not the foot);
• There seem to be some Hypoaspis mites in my terrarium (don't know how they got there). They do not focus on snails, more on excrement;
• I usually feed them with corn + wheat + chalk dry mix, occasionally adding some freshly picked broad-leaf canola, clover or cabbage leaves;
• I didn't notice any other parasites;
• I managed to find some info on one Spanish blog (yes, I tried looking in a few languages with google translator): yellow tone foot - snail dies by drowning by taking too much water through pores (the disease name was not provided. That's all I could understand from poor automatic translation). Other possible disease, according to that blog - Pseunomonas bacteria would explain green mucus, but my snails aren't paralyzed in any way and do not have unpleasant odor.

I'm sorry if I wrote too much. I hope you can provide me with any ideas on what might be the cause of the symptoms and how to treat the disease, if it is one.
Thank you in advance!

[muddydragon]

I don't have much experience with mites or H. aspera.

has the yellow developed suddenly or did they always have it? could it just be a natural colour variation?

[morningcoffee]

Sept 3, 2013 23:41:25 GMT brumin said:

Hello everyone,
This is my first post on this forum. I've been reading threads for a while now on this forum  (it really was a great helper!) , but I have an issue I can't find an answer to anywhere on this forum nor the internet and so decided to call for your help!
I have 6 Cornu Aspersum snails (a.k.a. Helix aspersa Muller / Brown garden snail). I will try to give as much information as I can.
5 of them have these symptoms:

• They give very bright (street worker vest's bright) yellow/greenish mucus when physically irritated (for example when I take the snail);
  
• The edge of foot has yellow tone to it (I don't know if it's related to yellow mucus, probably is. The tone is a bit more intense than seen in the picture). Normally these snails are simply gray or gray/brown;

Other information:

• They are about 4 months old;

• They seem to be normally active though;
• Two of them mated recently. One of them seems a bit swollen (the inner part around lip, not the foot);
• There seem to be some Hypoaspis mites in my terrarium (don't know how they got there). They do not focus on snails, more on excrement;
• I usually feed them with corn + wheat + chalk dry mix, occasionally adding some freshly picked broad-leaf canola, clover or cabbage leaves;
• I didn't notice any other parasites;
• I managed to find some info on one Spanish blog (yes, I tried looking in a few languages with google translator): yellow tone foot - snail dies by drowning by taking too much water through pores (the disease name was not provided. That's all I could understand from poor automatic translation). Other possible disease, according to that blog - Pseunomonas bacteria would explain green mucus, but my snails aren't paralyzed in any way and do not have unpleasant odor.

I'm sorry if I wrote too much. I hope you can provide me with any ideas on what might be the cause of the symptoms and how to treat the disease, if it is one.
Thank you in advance!

Hi there, welcome to the forum!

Apart from the yellow-tinged bodies and yellow froth, do the snails seem happy and healthy? Are they active and eating normally?

The tiny bugs in your tank are unlikely to be Hypoaspis and more likely to be something like springtails or another harmless soil bug, particularly if they are eating the snail poop. You should only really worry if you see small, white fast-moving mites all over the snails themselves or any kind of worm-like parasite on the snails or in their poop.

I'm not sure what you mean by feeding them a "dry mix"? Try giving them a varied diet of only fresh fruit and vegetables for a couple of weeks and see if the yellow tinge/slime fades at all (and provide a source of calcium in the tank for them to help themselves to). They often seem to prefer fruit/veg to be thinly-sliced - using a vegetable peeler can help produce very thin slices. You can try sweet potato, romaine lettuce or any dark green leafy lettuce, cucumber, butternut squash, apple, mango, courgette/zucchini, mushrooms, tomatoes, etc etc etc. Snails often also enjoy things like pumpkin seeds (you can feed these whole and they will rasp at the surface), brown bread soaked in water, nuts like peanuts and cashews (without any salt or seasoning of course!), plus a source of protein like dog or cat biscuits soaked in water, fish flakes, boiled eggs, or even a piece of raw bacon or mince.

If you don't have one already, you might like to put a shallow dish of water in the tank too and change the water every day. If it's some kind of skin problem, the snails might like the bathe themselves. Even if it's not, they often like to sit in shallow water anyway

[brumin]

Thank you guys for first opinions! 

muddydragon, they became yellow toned (edge of the foot) in a course of time (a month maybe), but not sure about yellow mucus.
I don't think it's natural color variation. I've looked through many pictures - only 1 or 2 are slightly similar in color.

morningcoffee, they might be a bit slower but looks healthy overall. They eat and even mated a few days ago. Dry mix is a mix of flours + chalk, which is a source of calcium. Recently I added a limestone chunk for additional calcium. I add various lettuces time to time and my snails love cucumber in particular. I should try adding water i guess. Snails don't seem to have any parasites, bugs nor worms.
I will try to take a better picture of the brown bugs in my tank.

Waiting for more opinions!