Mystery snails are wonderful pets to keep. They are colorful, interesting, and require minimal labor or attention from you to survive. If you are willing to keep one or more mysteries, it’s only natural to provide the best environment for their survival. Aquatic snails differ and will require different aquatic conditions to stay alive under your care. To keep happy healthy mystery snails, you must equip the ultimate mystery snail tank setup, or else your pets will die upon acclimation.
The ultimate mystery snail tank setup consists of a suitable-sized aquarium, the best substrate, and water parameters tailored for their survival. Tank equipment like air stones and filters are also fundamental to their wellness, including necessary heating or cooling systems.
Without further ado, let’s dive into building your mystery snails their perfect home away from home!
Setting Up Your Mystery Snail’s Tank: All The Stuff You Need
If you want your mystery snails to survive beyond the first two weeks under your care in their new tank setup, you must be intentional about how you create their home. Using the right materials in the right way is necessary to ensure your pets live their life to the fullest. Let’s start with the stuff you need for the tank setup:
An Aquarium
The first thing on your list is the actual tank itself in the correct size. Mystery snails grow up to 3 inches in size, and in a few cases, some exceed this mark with an extra 1 to 2 inches. Hence, your snail’s tank must be large enough to contain its development. You must also take into consideration how active mysteries are in nature; they like to explore their surroundings either finding food, laying eggs, or simply just messing around. If the tank is too small for them, they will become stressed which will surely reduce their quality of life and lifespan.
A good size is 5 gallons of space (view on Amazon) and above for each mystery snail. If you’ve got two snails coming in, you’d need 10 gallons and above. This calculation may be tweaked depending on the items you’re adding to your tank such as decor. Aquarium decor that occupies a lot of space should not be calculated in the 5 gallons dedicated to your snail. To be on the safe side, go for 20 gallons (view on Amazon) if you desire to be explorative in decorating your mystery snail’s tank so that they have enough area to live their lives to the fullest.
Glass Aquariums Or Plastic Aquariums?
Both types of tanks are equally durable when prioritizing quality over affordability. However, glass tanks are easier to clean and may outlive plastic tanks if you maintain them properly. On the other hand, plastic tanks retain heat and humidity adequately which is favorable if you reside in really cold regions. They are also a lot lighter and easier to move around without the danger of breaking or cracking in the process. It all depends on the struggle you choose to tackle.
Aquarium With Lid Or Without?
Mystery snails are fond of crawling out of the tank risking injury, falling to death, or simply going missing for several days. Due to this, I suggest an aquarium with lids to keep your pets inside. Also, ensure that the lids can let air in to prevent your little mollusks from suffocating. Despite being aquatic snails, they need properly oxygenated water to survive.
Substrate
If your mystery snail’s substrate is too sharp and spikey, they will find it difficult to move around as often as they like as it will cut tiny pieces onto their feet. Mystery snails enjoy sandy or loose substrate that will enable them to glide and burrow easily. Since they enjoy burrowing, you need a substrate that allows this behavior without hurting your little pretend-hermit snail such as the fluval stratum (view on Amazon). This substrate is lightweight enough to allow digging while being bigger and blunter than sand particles to prevent your pets from cutting themselves.
If you want some plants inside your tank, seachem flourite is the best for your pets and your greens (view on Amazon). It’s not as fun for the mystery snails as fluval stratum, but it also won’t cut them to shreds while they dig or graze.
Filtration System
A durable filtration system (view on Amazon) is crucial to keep your pet’s aquarium hygienic for them to live in. Since the water is fairly stagnant until a water change, dirt will accumulate causing the water to turn murky and smelly. This will disrupt the health of your mystery snails and threaten their survival in the long run. I recommend you install a gentle filtration system to maintain slow and delicate currents in the tank. Mystery snails may be active, but they are too delicate to be thrown around by strong currents as this could harm their shells.
Heating/Cooling System
A heating or cooling system is necessary depending on your environment. If you live in an extremely cold area that goes lower than 70° Fahrenheit, you need a heater for your tank. If otherwise, your aquarium gets hotter than 80° F, then a cooler is what you need (view on Amazon). It’s important to provide your pets with the proper temperature at all times if you want them to survive. Typically, mystery snails require an environment that measures from 70° – 80° F to stay healthy and happy.
A Thermostat And Thermometer
If you must have a heating system, you need a thermostat to help regulate the heat emitted by the device. If it gets to the desired degree, the thermostat will switch off the heating device ensuring that your snails don’t cook to death! So also the importance of thermometers; they help to determine the actual temperature of the tank. I recommend you have both digital and manual thermometers to ensure optimal accuracy at all times. Sometimes, these devices can act funny and your snail’s life shouldn’t be an expense. Better safe than sorry!
Air Stones
Air stones maintain proper water oxygenation and circulation, and mystery snails love them (view on Amazon). Sometimes, they are caught playing around the bubbles seemingly enjoying how they fling them around the tank. Since they enjoy aerated water conditions, they like to hang around the air stones for a whiff of fresh air.
Lighting
Your snails need the light to live their daily lives in harmony. So also your aquarium plants; you need a full spectrum light (view on Amazon) to enable the plants to grow healthy else they’ll just dwindle and die, causing ammonia to rise in the tank.
Aquarium Decoration
Now, this step gives you the chance to freestyle and get creative. You may include objects such as driftwood, plants, and mini statues in your snail’s tank to give your aquarium a personalized look. However, you must ensure the items are properly rinsed to prevent contamination or parasite infestation. If it helps, you may quarantine the items while your tank is cycling to ensure any parasite dwelling on the items is shaken off or exposed.
10 Easy Steps To Set Up Your Mystery Snail Aquarium
Now that you know or have all the items needed for a mystery snail tank, here’s how to set it up so that it’s ready to house your mystery snails:
1. Clean The Tank Properly
You must thoroughly clean your aquarium before use to ensure the absence of dangerous bacteria lingering or reproducing in your aquarium. The best substance for cleaning is vinegar. A few drops will go a long way in disinfecting the tank without bringing chaos upon its inhabitants.
2. Rinse And Add Substrate
The substrate you choose must be rinsed properly before use. Sometimes, they may harbor parasites or unwanted debris such as dead stalks or roots. Best to get all that washed away before use. After rinsing, you may proceed to pour it into your cleaned tank. The layers should be thick enough for a full adult snail to bury itself in it or enough for your plants to thrive if you plan on planting in the tank.
3. Add Filtration System
Place the filter into the tank, preferably at the back corners and away from sight. Filters, while essential, are not exactly the most attractive items and will disrupt the arrangement when placed in the middle of the tank.
4. Place The Heater/Cooler Inside The Tank
After the filtration system, you can proceed to put in the heater/cooler. Depending on the device you have, there will be instructions to follow to ensure you have properly installed it. Either way, they’re quite easy to install.
5. Add Plants And Decor
Depending on the appearance you’re going for, you may move to plant your green life and place your decor suitably in the tank. Ensure that the items are not overwhelming else your mystery snails will prefer to live on the surface of the water or bob around instead.
Will My Mystery Snails Eat My Live Plants?
Mystery snails do not eat live plants, so your green life is safe! They prefer to eat perishing foods like detritus and are omnivorous so their options are many. This will keep them away from your plants.
Will Mystery Snail Eat Algae?
Alongside your live plants, mystery snails do not actively eat algae. They may graze on them once in a while, but it’s certainly not a sustainable diet for them.
What Is A Sustainable Diet For Mystery Snails Like?
A good mystery snail diet consists of both plant and animal-based foods to keep them happy and healthy. Examples are blanched vegetables like kale, cabbages, green beans, bell peppers, and carrots alongside pieces of raw shrimp, fish, and protein pallets.
6. Pour In Your Water
After the following items have been set to taste, you may pour in your clean water. Ensure that the water is dechlorinated before placing your pets in it. Chlorinated water is dangerous for them, including water with high copper content in it. So, a de-chlorinator is necessary to ensure your pets are safe in their home.
7. Test The Water
The water parameters must be determined for your pets to safely live in their new tank. The parameters entail pH and hardness including the presence or absence of ammonia. There’s a reference table below that you can compare with your aquarium to determine the safety of the water chemistry. After which you can then adjust the parameters accordingly.
| Parameters | Ideal Range |
|---|---|
| Temperature | 70 – 80 (°F) |
| pH | 7.6 – 8.0 |
| Ammonia (NH3/NH4+) | 0 |
| Nitrite (NO2-) | 0 |
| Nitrate (NO3-) | 0 |
| Copper (Cu) | 0 |
| Water hardness | 150 – 300 ppm |
| Salinity | 0 |
How Do I Harden Water?
To harden the water, pour in crushed corals and wait a few hours. This will mineralize the water and thus harden it. Hardened water is necessary for aquatic snails because it helps them to grow strong shells. Without it, they will be vulnerable to shell cracking and erosion.
How Do I Lower/Increase pH?
Driftwood naturally secrete tannins that keep the water pH at a conducive level for your pets. But if this isn’t working for you, try adding some catalpa leaves or acorn caps. They also secrete tannins that effectively lower pH!
To raise pH, all you need is a natural more consistent method such as using crushed coral. PH works hand in hand with hardness, and would usually be safe enough relative to the water hardness of your aquarium.
How Do I Eliminate Ammonia/Nitrite?
The best way to eliminate ammonia is by cycling the tank. To fully cycle your tank, you need to get good bacteria or collect some from cycled tanks and then infect your aquarium with decaying food. With the help of water testers, you can take note of all the changes in parameters and compare them to the standard table I provided earlier. Your mystery snail aquarium is fully cycled when ammonia is registered as 0.
- Ensure your tank is set up correctly with a working filtration system and a few plants to complete the nitrogen cycle. Plants consume the end products of the nitrogen cycle (nitrates) to prevent it from building up.
- Throw a piece of perishable product into the tank and let it rot. Examples are fish pellets or just a piece of fresh fish.
- Now, you either have the option of using Fritz Zyme7 (view on Amazon) or acquiring some of the substrates from a properly cycled aquarium to introduce bacteria into the aquarium. The bacteria will feed on the ammonia breaking it into nitrites and further into nitrates. This is the beginning of the cycle and the start of a generation of beneficial bacteria.
- Use your API water testing kit (view on Amazon) to track the cycle of your tank. It’s highly necessary to know how good your aquarium is cycling, and the kit helps you read that clearly with visual comparisons. Once your ammonia and nitrite are at 0 ppm, and nitrate is detectable, it means ammonia is actively broken down and your pet’s home is properly cycled. Hence, your pets can enter their new home.
- Last but not least, patience is key. It can take anything from 2 days to months to get your tank fully cycled depending on the size of the aquarium and the quality of the bacteria you’re introducing.
8. Throw In Your Cuttlefish Bone
Cuttlefish bone is crucial for producing calcium for your mystery snails. It helps them to grow strong healthy shells through the stages of their lives. Without a source of calcium, their shells will grow poorly entailing dents, cracks, and peeling all over.
9. Place Your Acclimated Snails In The Tank
Mystery snails need to be properly acclimated into their new home to avoid stress from killing them upon contact. Here’s how to go about it:
- Place your mystery snails in a container with fresh water preferably the water it’s been living in or has been delivered in.
- Now, tie knots on the airline or place a valve to help monitor the flow of the water through the airline. You need a drop per second for your snail including a little suction to bring the water through the pipe.
- Put one end of the airline into the tank and the other end into the container holding your mystery snails.
- After the container holding the snails is filled, reduce the water volume in half before filling it with brackish water through the airline again. This would take up to 2 hours or sooner to complete. In the end, you can introduce your fully acclimated snails into their new tank.
10. Install The Lighting
Mystery snails need light at most 8 – 10 hours depending on the day-to-night pattern around them. When you’re adjusting the lighting or turning it off at night, ensure you do this gradually to prevent your snails from getting stressed. Once you’ve completed this step, your mystery snail tank set-up is all done!
