[Danielle]

One of my two snails (common unknown type.. the size of a lemon drop) committed suicide! It was in my 1 gallon planted low light tank and being fed regularly with algae pellets (not much algae to eat in that tank) and zooming happily along in life. The tank is on the 4th shelf up of a large bookshelf (eye level for me and I'm 5'5"). Yesterday morning though we woke up to find it dried up, stuck to the vertical piece between the bottom shelf and the floor. That's a long way for a snail to go and I'm not even sure how it dealt with all the shelves.

Why would it do this?????? Did the other snail chase it out? they were about the same size... but mostly they were uhmmm...... together.... making baby snails I think lol.... or perhaps I was wrong and they were fighting?

Tank gets small water changes twice a week with reconstituted RO water. Treated with seachem fertz on occasion, has a small HOB filter and 9w light. Regular gravel, once driftwood piece with java fern, anubias nana and two small patches of some leafy stem plant that I don't remember the name of.

Only other inhabitant besides the snails is a male beta, but he ignores them completely because he knows they are too big to eat.

 

[Ebichua]

How high is the tank's water level? If you keep Briggs, they lay eggs on top of water. Your snail may have been trying to lay eggs if your water level was too high, so it ventured out of the tank. Probably got lost along the way and died. Aside from that, mystery snails don't normally climb out of the water for fun, like nerites do.

To avoid this, get a cover for your tank or lower your water level about by about an inch. Just enough room for them to get out of the water for a short while, lay some eggs, then hop back in without actually exiting the tank.

Sorry for the loss :-(

 

[Danielle]

I'm not sure what type of snails they are. They lay eggs on the underside of plant leaves though, not on top of the water. There's about an inch of space between the water and the top of the tank though.

I think they are common pond snails... look like this one

 

[Ebichua]

Oh, that's just a simple pond snail. I thought you were talking about Mystery Snails sold at petsmart.
In that case, check water parameters. They don't normally travel out of water unless there's something wrong in the parameters. If your water is perfect, then you can conclude that your snail was emo.

 

[wrkucera]

suicide is painless. will you be hosting an on-line viewing for this snail? Will the eulogy be 500 words of less? I have a short attention span.