Post by assechan on Aug 18, 2020 7:12:48 GMT
Hello! I own a garden snail. She's been with me for easily over three years. I adopted her from outside so I'm not sure how old she is. Since then she's been lovely and I love her very much. Tonight I changed her habitat into a better, bigger and healthier environment, but she's had her shell hanging with little strength. She's had this "weakness" before but not this bad..her previous container wasn't that big and she spent most of the time attached to a wall, although I'd see her moving around at times and seemed healthy in general, able to eat and defecate fine. But now it seems she's barely able to move her shell around with her...to the point I saw a very scary sight: she was climbing onto this decoration she seemed to love instantly, but when trying to go down, she seemed fine until she wasn't supporting her shell? like it twisted like almost completely, and she started dettaching slowly as if she was faiting, I immediately and carefully picked her, allowing her to get her shell towards the right direction and came back to her senses after a few seconds, looking to be okay again. So I placed her gently on her bedding and started crawling again. This time she went to crawl on the walls of the tank and she was doing really well so I started getting more relieved, but then when turning towards a high edge, her shell was hanging too low...like her body was really struggling to move it around. It does seem it's too heavy for her and I'm very, very concerned...I was busy helping her move so I didn't take a picture, but the condition is very similar to the pictures in this post: petsnails.proboards.com/thread/10167/mantle-collapse-retraction
Is this mantle collapse or a problem in her mantle? the mantle itself seems fine and attached to her shell but it's her body or well, foot that seems very "out" of her shell.
I am very, very concerned she will get badly hurt...should I take her out of the container? she seemed very happy with having a lot of space for herself, exploring around and being very very active and eager to explore, but with how heavy her shell looks for her, I'm afraid she's going to get worse...I'm very scared, I really don't want to lose her..I haven't seen her eat in near a week or so unless she does it when I'm not looking but taking a look at her food, it doesn't seem she nibbled on it..
Please help, I lost my other snail not long ago and it was very painful to me, I could never tell what his problem was, he just stopped eating even though he was very active and playful and I really don't want this to be my current snail's problem too..