Shell Damage

[CACAdmin]

With our soft water here on the lower mainland, one has to be vigilant at keeping a high enough GH and adequate calcium in the water to avoid Snail shell erosion. The evidence of this became even more apparent to me recently.

Some of my P. Bridgesii applesnails occupy my fry grow-out tank. At one point because the tank was seriously overcrowded with fry & juvies I was doing large daily water changes for quite a while. I have a fair amount of tufa rock and shells in the tank to keep the GH up and add calcium to the water column. This is normally quite adequate as the rock dissolves quite quickly. But with constant water changes the GH & calcium levels dropped considerably as is evident in the sudden shell erosion on the snails.:Eek: Proof that these factors were to blame is seen in that since the sale of a lot of the fish in that tank my water changes are back to once every 10 days or so and my GH is back up, resulting in beautiful new shell growth as can be seen in this picture:

http://www.canadianaquariumconnection.com/jb_images/Brig-shell-damage.jpg

What I will do in future if I find myself in such a situation is to either move the snails temporarily to another tank or at the very least add liquid calcium with every water change.

[kristarockstar]

I think the water in Calgary is pretty hard, but I add a small amount of calcium for my snails anyway. How do you test for GH?

[CACAdmin]

I'm lazy (& don't have a test kit) so I use the 5-in-i test strips. My GH is usually well over 100 ppm but my tap water here is 5 ppm :swoon: . Hence the continual water changes meant REALLY soft water... not good!:no:

[Melody]

That is an excellent example!

[CACAdmin]

Yes, but I feel so badly for the snails that were affected.:(

[Corbin]

i have a snail that looks exactly like that... and my first apple snail ever shell has holes in the middle, but no flesh exposed :)
but no with all my snail tanks i use alot of baking soda and egg shells to keep it good.
but in my community where all the baby snails are, ive notices that the blue/purple color erodes alot quicker then say, the gold and magenta colors. cuz some of the blue babys already have damage but the magenta ones are fine.
maybe there is a link ?

[CACAdmin]

GH & calcium in the water column are only part of the picture. They also require a calcium rich diet. The reason I knew the damage mine sustained was the due to water parameters was because their diet remained unchanged and the problem was immediately rectified once the GH & calcium levels had a chance to rise again.

If your community tank has driftwood in it, it in itself will make the water softer. I do have a small piece of driftwood in my 70g community tank which houses snails as well but I kept checking the GH and kept adding Texas Holey rock and tufa until the GH levels were high enough.

I haven't noticed any variations in the amount of damage with regard to how it impacts the various colors of snail but possibly some colors have a thinner shell to begin with. I'm just guessing on that point. Maybe someone else with more snail experience can answer that.

[Melody]

It usually just shows more on dark colors.