Snails dying

[NatureNut]

I was talking aquariums with a store owner in our town and he mentioned that he's been having problems with snails in his aquarium. He bought 'several' apple snails and they've been dying off one by one. A couple of things came out in our conversation. First, he used distilled water to set his tank up (it has guppies as well, and some live plants) in December, and he hasn't changed his water even once yet... :boxed: You know... the whole "but the water's really clean" thing. He also told me that his tank is pristine... no algae or obvious gunk on the bottom. He wondered if they might be starving.

Anyhow, I had him bring in a water sample and there's 0 nitrates, nitrites or ammonia. I'd guess that the snails can't survive without the minerals in the water, anything else that could be going on? I've already told him to do water changes and to use mineralized water.

[lukep77]

I was having trouble keeping snails in my tanks. For some reason they would dye off in my hex when I had it, and the only thing that I had in there were some green terrors that I was growing out. I tried all kinds of snails, but the only ones that would survive were MTS. I still can keep them alive in my 90g, the only ones that are ok are the millions of MTS.

Edited June 19, 2007 by lukep77

[FishBrain]

Apple snails LOVE the greens, I used to have them and breed them successfully.

They are big pollutants (?) Clean water and plants should do the trick, also a few algae tabs wouldn't hurt either.

[grapeape]

I agree with fishbrain, they eat ALOT, plus lack of minerals would probably be it. They are not finicky about water quality