No growth?

[skagirl88]

Hi everyone,
I'm to keeping snails so please forgive me any ignorance - although I will do my best to learn.
I currently have 2 GALS. I got my first one in the middle of February and in all that time it has barely grown (if at all). It is a white jade fulica. I've read that it could be a care problem but I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I use organic coir substrate, they get a variety of vegetables/fruit to eat, cuttlefish bone, moss, and a hiding place. I mist the tank regularly. I never see it on the cuttlefish bone taking in calcium and I'm really worried about it.
Because I'd never kept a GALS before I wasn't sure how fast it *should* be growing. It only became obvious to me when a) I noticed its shell looking dull and brittle and b) I took on a rescue GALS baby, only a few weeks old and when it arrived it is already bigger than my jade, and looking much healthier and more active!
I have tried physically placing on the cuttlefish bone, giving crushed egg shells, and placing calcium powder on food but nothing seems to work.
Can anyone help??
Is there something I am missing or is this snail just a little oddity?
I'd appreciate any advice

[lee2211]

Hi, and welcome to the forum.
There're many more calcium sources you can give your snails.
Oyster shell grit, which you can grind down into a powder or leave it, limestone flour, crushed eggshells (which I see you've already tried), the obvious cuttle, and liquid calcium.
I get most of my calcium supplements from here - www.duskdreamersnails.co.uk/
Try mixing some calcium powder into their soil, they'd have calcorous (sp?) in the wild.

You can buy liquid calcium on eBay, I get Kent Marine stuff because it's one of the cheapest and has given people good results. You put a couple of drops on their spray water, and (if you give them baths) their bath water.

The next thing is calcium isn't all snails need to get a good shell, I believe protein also helps. You can achieve this by feeding high protein food, like doc leaves, dandelion leaves and nettles (any type) which are high in calcium and protein but low in oxalates (an acid which prohibits the intake of calcium).
You could feed hemp, which is very nutritous. Somewhere in the feeding section there's a sticky about Pauls snail mix recipe which he made.
You can also mash up dog biscuits, make sure they have NO salt, and they have to be wet. I place some in boiling water for about 10 minutes and then mash them up in a pestle and mortar.
You haven't been feeding spinach have you? Because spinach is very high in oxalates and I have been lead to believe if fed to much can be detrimental to a snails health.

Lastly, it could possibly be bad genetics. If the parents of your snails were inbred, and their parents and their parents ect ect were inbred it could cause bad growth, shortened life span and sometimes freak growths like extra or less eyestalks than normal. But it takes alot of inbreeding to cause these effects. Snails in the wild inbreed to a certain extent I believe for certain traits that are useful.
I know that jadatzis (full albino fulica) did have some trouble. The chinese were mass inbreeding them for food, meaning that people were having trouble keeping them. They were dying early and expressing growth and health problems.

Hope this helps.

[skagirl88]

Thanks for taking the time to write a big reply ;D
I'm going to experiment with some different calcium sources and have a look for foods with more protein. I've never fed spinach, but I've given kale once or twice (I read it shouldn't be fed to them often) They also get apple, carrot, sweet potato, melon, mango, mushroom etc. They go crazy for cucumber but I only give it as a treat really.
I actually have some hemp seeds that I put into my rats' food mix - will the snails eat the seeds?
I also read on the forum that vitamin d deficiency can stunt growth. I'm not sure if it will have an effect but we have a UV light in the house so would it be worth exposing the snail to a bit of UV for a few mins a day?
If Squelch was small but healthy, I wouldn't really mind but the condition of the shell worries me it is not shiny at all and looks very thin with these sort of lines striped across it. I hope I can improve his condition, I feel quite guilty!

[lee2211]

Well I've heard the thing about UV light being speculated around the forum, but I've heard somewhere that snails do not have the cells like reptiles do to utilise UV into VitD so I'm not quite sure.
But I know my snails deffinately like being taken out into the sun for a couple of hours.
I put them on a plastic bit of sheeting and they sit on that for a few hours. I spray them well to make sure they don't dry out, and I do it in the afternoon so it's a bit cooler.

petsnails.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=feeding&action=display&thread=2771
That's a thread about hemp seed, it has lots of information and if you have the time I reccomend reading through it.
Also if you have the time, try looking through old posts in the feeding section to see if you can get any more variety in their diet. But you're doing well, better than a lot new comers.

[coyote]

Hi skagirl, welcome to the forum. Sometimes it is genetics that cause a snail to stay small, so often no matter what you do the snail doesn't really grow, or grows very slowly. As long as the snail is otherwise healthy and behaving normally it shouldn't be a problem.

I notice that my Otalas and aspersas get darker when I put their tanks outside in the shade (never in direct sun), so some kind of light absorption is going on. I know that that's not a direct indicator of Vitamin D absorption, but it's an indicator of some kind of metabolic response to sunlight.

[lee2211]

If it is genetic bad growth might not be the only problem though, I've found my fulicas have bad genetics due to be rescues and having been cared for badly are now constantly ill. It's very distressing.

But hopefully this is not the case here.

[skagirl88]

Thought I would update on Squelch the not-so-giant snail, lol...
Many months later, Squelch is still pretty much still the same size. He is a year old and only baby size, but I've tried experimenting with different conditions since I last posted and think it's finally worked!
I now use a small heat mat, and I use half and half coir+moss, I managed to get hold of some very soft cuttlefish bone which seems to have made a difference and moved the tank near my window so Squelch gets more natural light (don't worry it is not in direct full sunlight at any time) I also planted some baby salad leaf seeds in there which has sprouted and I intend to experiment with other safe plants to grow.
I am finally seeing little notches on the cuttlefish and I can see the new 'layers' at the edge of the shell, where it's growing. In the last couple of weeks it has grown about 6mm. Literally more than it has in over a year. We had a really cold year last year, so I don't know if the weather this year has helped, but it seems that Squelch understands his little snaily tasks now and is much more active. Yay ;D

[coyote]

Thanks for the update, glad he is responding to your efforts.

Have you tried powdered limestone for calcium? It is a lot softer than cuttle. I mix mine with a little water and mold it into a little lump for them to rasp. Given the choice of both cuttle and limestone lump in the tank, my snails ignore the former and gravitate toward the latter.

[skagirl88]

I haven't tried limestone, but now he's on his cuttle I could try him with the calcium powder/oystershell again, I've got lots

There are 2 patches on his shell that look pale and dry compared to the rest, even when he's wet - is this a sign of growth or should I be concerned?

[coyote]

I've heard others mention dry-looking patches on the shell, and the snail was fine. We were never able to figure out what was going on, but the shell overall stayed strong and healthy.

Nevertheless, keep an eye on those patches, just in case.

[ness]

Hi and thanks for the update.

It's so hard to tell sometimes why some snails do not grow. Some remain small but healthy and some die off just before they reach sexual maturity. It's not nice to think about but it is a reality that you have to face. However I have had very small snails with poor shell growth who have lived for years. It is likely to be genetic, in which case he may never grow very much. You have been given alot of excellent information and advice and are doing all the right things to help Squelch reach his growth potential, what ever that ends up being.
Good luck little Squelch xx