Hey guys, Andrew Esquivel here.
I've come back with another fishy tip and trick for you.
Actually, it's not fishy, it's snaily.
Maybe you've just gotten your first snail or you've had your snails for a while and
you might not be too familiar with the way they act and you might think, "My little buddy
hasn't moved in a while, is he okay?
The fact of the matter is yes, snails do tend to hibernate for a lot of different reasons.
It could be due to bad water conditions or it could be something as simple as they have
eaten and they are sleepy and are going to just lay back and digest for a while.
If you're not sure, there's a very easy way if your snail is dead or alive.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to just pick up one of my mystery snails here.
We've got a jade.
When a snail dies, it decomposes very quickly and when it decomposes, it releases a ton
of ammonia.
This is really bad for your tank but you will be able to smell the ammonia, it will be a
very pungent, disgusting odorous smell.
All you've got to do, and this is going to seem kind of weird but trust me this works,
take your snail and you sniff it.
If it doesn't smell like anything, your little buddy is probably alive and he's just chilling
out in the shell but if it smells really bad, chances are your little buddy has passed away.
It's very important if you have a melancholy snail that just doesn't move around a lot
to check like this once in a while because if your little buddy has passed away and is
releasing tons of ammonia, it's what I like to call an ammonia bomb and it can cause spikes
in your tank.
You don't want spikes in your tank.
People with a ton of snails can have a massive die-off and have a domino effect because of
this.
One snail dies, releases ammonia, the ammonia is toxic, kills another snails and that's
even more ammonia and more and more and more, then things spike up and start killing the
tank.
Things like that can be really detrimental if you don't have a really good system set
up.
That's just one reason to check.
You might be thinking, "Why do snail hibernate?
You were saying something about maybe they're just digesting."
Yes, this is true, snails like assassin snails, for instance, will eat their prey and then
basically hibernate for about two or three days and then become active again.
Mystery snails can be more active than that, they'll be crawling around and what not, and
if they want to conserve energy, they often hide in their shells for a while.
Maybe this is a sign that they're not being fed a lot, mystery snails are not really all
that good at eating algae and people just assume because it's the snail that it does.
Mystery snails need a much more complex diet, you should be feeding them vegetables like
blanched cucumber, for instance, or certain things like romaine lettuce, things high in
calcium, which are foods that you would probably eat.
This makes mystery snail care a little more difficult, people don't seem to realize this
and that can cause them to be a bit melancholy.
Nerite snails are very sensitive to water parameters if they're in a freshwater tank
because technically, nerite snails are brackish water snails but they can live and thrive
in freshwater, they just won't breed in freshwater successfully.
If the freshwater is not just right, the snails will recede into their shells and not move
around much at all, when normally a healthy nerite snail would be zooming across the tank
constantly, eating all of the algae it possibly can.
There's a lot of reasons why a snail would hibernate, checking on a hibernating snail
is important to make sure the rest of your buddies don't die from a domino effect.
I hope this little blurb was helpful and informative.
If it is, please give me a thumbs up, don't forget to comment, rate, subscribe, show your
friends, check out my other videos, I've got plenty of them.
As always, I'll see you next time.
Stay fishy.