Did a bunch of research because our godson brought home some snails from school, wanting to keep them as pets. His gardening club had found them in and amongst their plants.
Random Snail Facts:
To start with, depending on the species of snail, apparently they can live 8 to 15 years. (Ours did not, but more on that in a bit.) Snails are hermaphroditic, both male and female. Most species still need to mate to produce eggs. A scant number are capable of self-reproduction.
A single snail can lay 200-400 eggs every season. This can cause drastic complications in your snail tank, if you do manage to keep conditions appropriate enough to cause a snail-splosion. We somehow managed to. Because of this, we discovered that snails will resort to a form of cannibalism if you cannot keep enough calcium available in the tank for all of them. Our small snails would climb onto our larger snails. At first we thought this was a form of social interaction, and some of it may have been. However, we started noticing “trails” in the larger snails shells…. left by the baby ones as they ate the grown snails’ shells to help form their own. We took 50-100 baby snails out of the tank every time we did a cleaning, and still ended up losing the older ones due to shell weakening and complications that came out of it. So, no matter how cute they seem, if your snails manage to breed, get as many of them out of your primary tank as you can.
Snails do like social interaction with other snails, so keeping more than one is a good idea. However, if you think you will be releasing your snails at some point, don’t mix local and exotic species.
Snails are harmless, and you can handle them without issue, as long as you do it gently and do not pick them up by the shell. Slide your finger under the snail’s body, or offer it food, and then pick up the food and the snail together. You should wash your hands before and after handling. Snails also enjoy baths. We used to bathe them (light stream of water to clean off the shells and body) every time we cleaned the tank, and it seemed to make them happy. Granted, gauging snail happiness is an odd sort of thing.
Care and Keeping of Snails:
Keep snails in a clear, well-ventilated aquarium. You definitely want a sturdy and secure lid, as snails are surprisingly strong. From our observations, they really like climbing things, so making the inside of the aquarium interesting is a good idea. They enjoy it, and were surprisingly interesting to watch.
Keep the aquarium itself in a safe place – avoid direct sunlight, and make sure they are not near any chemicals or direct heat.
Cover the bottom of the aquarium with something springy – peat moss, cocoa fibres, coir, etc… You want to keep it damp, but not wet.
Humidity inside the tank should be 60-70%. Keep a dish of water inside, and spray as needed. Clean the aquarium weekly, including the snails themselves. Post-bath snails were fun to watch, as they would suddenly become much more zippy. Do not use vinegar or detergents to clean out their area – stick with water and patience and elbow grease.
As far as food goes, snail diet is varied, and something you can experiment with. Our set were just garden snails, and they had different food preferences. Overall, go with green plant matter and a calcium source. Dandelions are actually a really good choice, as they are a green with a ton of calcium. Spinach is similar. Most of ours truly loved carrots, and dandelion greens always went before any other green matter. They also liked leeks. As far as calcium sources – fish bones work, as do egg shells, and so do any old snail shells that you might find in your garden or yard. You can also use baby milk powder, or straight bone-meal.
