Jun 13, 2009
Posted by Freshwater Aquariums in FAQ | 6 Comments
How Do You Know When An Aquarium Snail Is Dead?
I just a bought 2 apple snails the size of 3 quarters in a triangle, but round, and put them into a 29 gallon tank, with aquarium salt, and they haven't moved yet. Its been 2 days. I just moved them into a 10 gallon tank without aquarium salt to see if they would move. No sign of movement yet, only been 5 min. What do I do?
Take them out and smell them. If no odor and the operculum (shell door) is still intact when you touch it, then it’s still alive and just stressed. Check your water parameters and temperature and find out what’s causing it to hole up (or die if that’s the case). Poor water quality, wrong temperature and/or harassing tankmates could be causing it to stay closed up.
When snails die, they decay pretty quickly. Their “trap door” will fall off (the piece of shell they cover their opening with). If you pick them up, liquified snail will drift out of the shell.
If their trap door is still being held tight, they should be alive still.
well they move really slowly..if they fall off the glass or start decomposing that’s basically the only way to know for sure
I would just leave them be….snails can be immobile for a long time. Don’t torture them to see if they’re alive, I’m sure they’re fine…….
whats a tank snail
to check if the snail is alive, take it out of the water and see if you can get it moving by touching the shell door. If the shell is closed completely, then you can be sure that the snail is alive because once the snail is dead, the muscles are relaxed and the shell door stays at least partly open. Quickest way to find out whether a snail is dead is to pick it up and do a sniff test. Snail germs…if you mean the bacteria of decomposition, then no, they don’t exactly make fish sick as such, but large dead snails can soon cause water quality problems because they produce ammonia as they break down, and in any case, you wouldn’t want to put new, stressed fish into bacterial soup. If the snail is dead, take it out and do a water change. Test the water to make sure before you put any fishies in there. plus the dead ones smell really bad after a day or so