#snailcare

Fruit flies get to be a bigggg problem in the summer months and this is a little guide on how to get the pests under control!

Repellent

You can use plants such as mint and basil as a repellent for fruit flies. Just plant them in your snail tank. Your snail might even have a munch of them as they are completely snail safe!

Never take out all your substrate to clean out your snail tank. It can be extremely harmful to them since they need the good bacteria in their tank. It can seriously affect their health negatively and can even shorten their life span.

How to control the flies

Okay so you have fruit flies in your tank and the repellent didn’t work. No big deal. This could be the perfect time to introduce a clean up crew. What is a clean up crew? It’s basically little inverts that you introduce into your snail tank to clean the tank for you such as getting rid of nasty snail poop. What most people use as a clean up crew is isopods and springtails. You can collect isopods from outside, quarantine them for three weeks then introduce them to your tank or you can alternatively buy some cool colourful ones online my personal favourites are dairy cow isopods and magic potion isopods. The isopods eat the fruit fly larve and eggs so it stops the cycle.

Another method of control

So the isopods and springtails didn’t work what now? Another option is Gnatrol. What is gnatrol you ask? Well, gnatrol is a biological larvicide that attacks the larve of fungus and fruit fly gnats. It’s safe for snails but you can only buy it in the US on eBay (you can get it shipped to other counties but it takes a while) so I use it as a last resort.

What else can you do?

If you don’t want to get a clean up crew or you can’t get gnatrol another option is to put fly tape around your enclosure. You can also get carnivorous plants such as pitcher plants in order to take care of the fly problem. If that still doesn’t work or the flies are too bad, you can take your snails out of their enclosure and set up a temporary tub. You can then put fly tape inside your enclosure and set up fly traps. A good fly trap is to get a glass and mix apple cider vinger with washing up liquid so the fly gets stuck and dies.

1. They need humidity. If they have no moisture in their habitat, they secrete a membrane over the opening of their shell and and hide in it until moisture in the tank is restored.

2. They like climbing. They climb all over me, their tank and eachother.

3. They shed pieces of their shell as their shell grows. The shell underneath is fragile.

4. Snails can be picky eaters, especially if not fed a variety of food early on in life. 

5. They enjoy sleeping in the same spot every night, on top of the tank in the corners.

Food:

As I said, snails tend to like veggies and fruit; they enjoy all kinds of foods, and you can feed a great many food-scraps to them with exceptions to things listed in the next segment. I tend to feed my snails homegrown lettuces, radish-leaves, and arugula; I’ve tried broccoli and zucchini with success; and I’ve read about snails eating and enjoying apple and starchy fruits, and some even like tomato.

I urge against attempting to feed snails any form of salt or sugar, as well as any garlic, onion, or citrus (including oranges and definitely not lemon). In small quantities these may not be lethal, but it is better to be careful. Another good to avoid is pasta, bread, and any other “expanding” grain. If snails eat pasta it will expand in their stomachs and result in death.

Personal Accounts: I have heard of handlers feeding radish leaves to their snails, and that they love it; however, my helix snails don’t particularly care for them. My snails tend to like lettuce the most, they’ll also destroy an arugula leaf in less than an hour, and they really love broccoli.

Minerals:

Snails need protein and calcium, like any other creature, but it seems that where their needs end for smaller land species like Helix Pomatia. The best investment for a snail enclosure is cuttlebone (pictured below), which is commonly found in the bird-section of most pet stores. In place of such a material, many handlers will use crushed eggshell (which is easiest to work with when you remove the membrane)

Personal Accounts: Before getting a cuttlefish bone I would crush eggshells (in a mortar and pestle, clean of chemicals and salts) into a fine powder and spread it on their food. I would also get a small dish and pour some eggshell in it and the snails would eat it right out of the container.

Water:

Snails are wet, slimy, cold mollusks. In their environments they prefer to have a moderate humidity - between 30% and 60%. For small tanks with no capability of a digger, or a larger tank with open space, moss can provide great humidity and give ample shelter. Their substrate (which I will delve into in a later post) shouldn’t be wet, due to molding, but it should be damp; you can get away with spritzing their tank twice a day with an average spray bottle. It’s also beneficial to provide them a very shallow dish with water (a good rule of thumb is 1/2-1/4 the height of your smallest guy, otherwise they can drown) - this will give them the resource to hydrate when needed. Change the water in the dish daily to give them fresh, pH balanced water.

Almost done my snail guide, however, i got the inspiration to write an FAQ for the book. Any other questions yall have about snails that haven’t been answered yet because i havent thought of them, will be put there.