#theproturkey

I don’t think air is going to be much of a problem if you only keep a few snails, even if you put a plastic lid with air holes in it, but of course air flow will help prevent fungus/mold from overgrowing things. That may or may not be desirable depending on whether the species of snail/slug you keep enjoys fungi and molds.

Your biggest concerns in a large tank would be: finding and destroying eggs in time before you have 300 tiny snails all over the place, which happens very quickly.

Once you have these tiny ones (aka “buttons”), they can squeeze through tiny openings, and will go (and perish) everywhere. So you need to think about making your cover button-impermeable. I ended up hot-gluing a piece of weed-block (aka landscape fabric, or weed barrier) to the inside of the mesh lid that came with the tank. It is air-permeable, but the holes are small enough that the buttons and even young hatchling slugs couldn’t make it through.

Since you don’t have a cover, maybe you could use a plastic cover from a storage bin that’s large enough, or also, make a sort of “shower cap” for the terrarium, with an elastic to keep it on tight. Snails will get into the creases and folds though, so maybe not the best idea.

If you have a hot glue gun, you can use some styrofoam to glue a lid that fits tightly around the top of the tank, leaving some/all of the middle open and attaching some weed block there for airflow.

I was unable to find anything about UV needs of land snails, and I’m sure it varies per species, depending on habitat. If you are keeping snails that are known to be out and about in the sun, they may benefit from an hour or so of full-spectrum UV.

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Cuttle bone can be purchased at any pet store, they sell them for birds, so you may be able to find one locally. Thing with them is... as the pollution levels in the oceans rise, heavy metals and other toxic substances accumulate in the bodies of ocean dwellers, such as cuttlefish. My vet (who is specialized in birds and exotics) wasn’t endorsing cuttlebone as a source of calcium anymore, due to that.

I’ve been using it myself, but once I run out, I won’t buy any more.

Egg shells are a good source of calcium. You can crush them and mix them in with the substrate, or leave larger chunks around. They are slightly more difficult for the snails to rasp, so you can also use a mortar and pestle to pulverize it and sprinkle it on the food you give to your snails.

Substrate: Snails like to dig, they are amazing at that. That’s a natural behavior that snails out in the wild engage in a lot. The substrate should be deep enough for them to completely disappear in. That has obvious drawbacks of not seeing your pet as often, and making eggs more difficult to find. But it’s a part of a snail’s natural environment.

On a flip side, you can (and I have done so for sick/quarantined snails) just lay a couple layers of wet paper towel on the bottom of the tank. The snail will eat some paper, but they’re going to be fine, just don’t freak out when you see white poop :) The snails don’t seem to fare any worse in that environment - as long as you allow them to keep and re-ingest some of their poop to maintain digestive flora, they’ll thrive, for a while at least.

Just sit them on some food, and you will see!

Try a slice of carrot (organic, peeled), or a slice of zucchini. You will see them nodding their little heads as they rasp away at the food.

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