Post by alvi on Aug 28, 2019 10:39:00 GMT
Hey everyone. I thought I would share my recent experiences with my snails, maybe get some help, maybe give you some new info.
So, I've had several snails die without any clear cause recently. I am down to just 2 snails, when I had 7 before. The first ones to go, I thought it was just because of their age. I did, however, notice some weird orange spots on their bodies after they died. I assumed it was just a weird looking part of them i couldn't see before. But while I was away on vacation, one of my young snails died. I got back and another was acting odd - lethargic, not very hungry. Then I noticed these spots on her.
image link: imgur.com/YvbX4e8
In the circled area, you can see there are slightly orange tinged spots in her foot. The big one would sometimes be visible from her side as a lump. Well, today she died, and I decided it was time to figure out what was going on. So I preformed a snail autopsy. What I found was pretty inconclusive. Her stomach and intestines were basically empty, save some little dark spots that looked like they could be dirt/substrate. There seemed to be a weird red color in those organs, much more red than anything I had been feeding them. It seemed like she hadn't eaten in a while. I also got a look at those spots. I cut to reach one of the big ones, and found that it wasn't solid. It kind of just dissolved when I touched it. I found another one deeper in her body, almost attached to her throat but not quite, still free-standing. I couldn't find anything else weird about her body, so I buried her and started researching.
The most relevant thing was this paper: link
Basically, these scientists tested how helix pomatia deal with foreign substances like bacteria and yeast in their bodies. And it specifically mentioned that particles could be stored in the foot and other areas that aren't organs. It's almost like a snail pimple, but one that can't be popped because it could be anywhere in their body.
I wanted to share what I found, because maybe someone else will see that their snail has weird bumps and lumps and is acting sick. It seems to me like my snails were suffering from some kind of bacterial infection which made them lethargic and decreased their appetite, eventually killing them. It was hard to find information about this kind of sickness, so I hope this post might help someone else who sees the same symptoms in their snail, to at least have an idea of what is going on. I am planning to thoroughly clean the enclosure in the hopes that my last two snails will make it, if they haven't caught the disease already.
Does anyone have any advice for snails in this situation? Do you know of any kind of food that helps when they have an infection? Any kind of treatment? Unfortunately, my research didn't give me much to try on those fronts.