urgent-snail shells cracked :(

[norassnails]

I am so sad right now. 

I had a fungus gnat problem and it was bugging me, so I decided to sterilize the soil with boiling water. I removed my snails, and put them in an empty ice cream container to hold em temporarily while I got all the gnat maggots out. Somehow, the snails slipped off the edge off the table and onto the hard ground. I feel terrible. The snails in the cup all have significant damage to their shells. 

I moved them into a very small container with only paper towel, sweet potato, and cuttlebone, and I am constantly misting them. They seem very active but are not eating. I am not sure what else I can do for these little guys. I'll take any suggestions I can get. I am home all day to give them the TLC they need, I just don't know what to do. mo

I feel hopeless and awful because I was trying to get rid of the gnats and I basically killed all my adults.  I feel so dumb being this sad because I have over 50 babies growing too. 

Please help me  

photos: (these pictures are terrible because of the device I'm on, the pieces of the snails shell has fallen off and the middle is soft 

ibb.co/446fYsC

for this photo the middle isn't soft like the other one but still badly crushed 

ibb.co/r57fw7m

[pasi9]

I know it's easy to say, but don't be too hard on yourself, accidents like this happen!

Judging from the pictures, I've seen breaks like this before and they can recover. It sounds like you're doing everything right(small container, food, calcium, moisture is all they need), just make sure you don't handle/move them unless you have to. If they're moving and active that's a very good sign, they will eat when they need to.

I had a snail with a terrible broken shell that healed and lived for a year and half afterwards. I made a thread when I found her if you want to see pictures/read about her healing, it might be useful to you? petsnails.proboards.com/thread/18103/aspersa-badly-damaged

[SuspiciousBagel]

Hi, sorry for the late reply. Like pasi said, everyone makes mistakes, and you're doing your best to fix them so that's what's important! That injury looks bad but if they've made it so far it's certainly worth a try to get them healed. Snails are remarkable little animals and can recover from quite dire situations. I'd suggest removing the paper towel as it can cause an intestinal blockage if the snail eats it, or just otherwise make them sick from whatever its been treated with. Also try feeding them some kind of protein like rehydrated mealworms or Gammarus shrimp to get their strength up. Please keep us updated!!!

[norassnails]

Sorry this is a late reply. I forgot to mention in the first post that the snails had recently mated (one had a love dart in it), and I'm wondering if they didn't have enough energy to mend themselves. After a long time of them being very active (not eating though), they all stopped moving, I didn't want to move them, and they passed away. I was really hoping they would eat as I went to the store to get sweet potato (their favorite) to get them to eat. I couldn't get them to eat anything. I thought to myself that I don't think that they had the energy to stay here? I hope they left peacefully.
I did research on the popular egg membrane bandage thing, and I decided not to do that because I didn't want to handle them or introduce/trap any infection. Now I wonder if there is anything I could have done differently to save them. They were beautiful snails and I feel like I have failed them.
thank you for your responses and reassurance

[SuspiciousBagel]

Oh my gosh. That really sucks. I am so sorry for your loss. But you haven't failed them at all- you didn't hurt them on purpose, it was a stroke of very bad luck and could've happened to anyone. You did everything you could (or anyone could) to help them, there was nothing you could've done differently that would've drastically changed this outcome. As far as i know, the purpose of it is to keep the injury clean and prevent dehydration but as you were already keeping the snail very humid and with no substrate it wouldn't have really done much, and yes could increase risk of infection. It is possible that the snail had internal damage and that is why they died. Again, my condolences and I hope the other snails make it.

[norassnails]

Thanks for the encouragement, it's still really hard, but I'm trying my best not to be too hard on myself. I was watching all the snails (3 fell) and misting them a lot, and they were all very active but then none of them ate anything. maybe they did have internal damage? I thought at least one would pull through, but they just wouldn't eat I tried so many different foods and watched them all the time, it was really frustrating and confusing.. It might have been a bad idea to keep two snail friends that fell in the same container, they were very close to each other and on top of each other, which might not have helped, but it was probably worse if I tried to pull them apart. I'm glad I have babies to raise right now though..