At some point in your journey with your pet mystery snails, you’ll begin to wonder how enduring they can be. It’s usually when you have a trip at the corner and are hoping your snails can survive at home without the sky falling. Either that or you’re simply a curious person wondering how hardy these mollusks can be. What are their chances of survival without their nutritious food?
Mystery snails can last at most 14 days without food if they don’t enter aestivation. Usually, they enter aestivation to preserve resources and prolong their chances of survival, which can add a couple of weeks to months without food. However, it would generally depend on how healthy the mystery snails are before their food source is cut off to determine how long they can last.
What Happens When You Don’t Feed Your Mystery Snails? The Stages Leading To Death
Simply put, your snail will die with time. But what happens during the period before it passes away? There are processes that your pet will experience in its final moments without food.
Their Energy Depletes
The first few days will have your snails surviving on stored energy sources like glycogen and lipids to keep them going. During this period, they will scout tirelessly for food, utilizing more energy than they have. If you have algae they can graze on in the tank, it may give the mystery snails a few more days to survive the hard times before they get fed again. However, this is not enough to sustain them completely if they are not fed proper food.
There Will Be Slower Metabolic Activity
After their energy reserves get depleted, mystery snails may enter aestivation due to the lack of resources. Aestivation is a period of reduced metabolism to help the snails preserve their nutrients and extend their chances of survival which your mystery snails may enter after a couple of days without food. The state will resemble a deep sleep and may last even months depending on the snail and on how healthy it is.
It’s almost impossible to tell when a snail will die while it is aestivating because it’s a survival strategy. Since they stay dormant while aestivating, there’s every possibility that your snail may come out victorious or remain that way till it starves to death. Also, mystery snails are even more individualistic than they may seem; they all have different quirks, strengths, and weaknesses that will give one an advantage over the other. One mystery snail can be more resistant compared to another perhaps due to its good genes.
Lethargy Kicks In
Due to the reduced metabolic activity, the mystery snail will become lethargic. Nutrients are broken down into energy sources that the snails use to move around and stay active, and when there are no means to replace the nutrients, they become less functional. The exact time this happens can vary depending on the snail itself.
For instance, juvenile snails are the most active compared to adult and elder snails and will run out of energy quicker. Meanwhile, since elderly snails already experience lethargy, they may become weaker in situations where there’s no food.
Their Immune System Weakens
Gradually, prolonged lethargy leads to weakened immunity from disease-causing bacteria and fungi. Living organisms are constantly battling illnesses on a cellular level, and without replenishing those cells, your snails become exposed to falling sick. This further increases the likelihood of the mystery snail passing away since they’re surviving on managed resources, to begin with.
Organ Failure
Following a weak immune system, the organs begin to fail as they also get little to no nutrients or immunity. Unlike mammals, mystery snails have simpler organs for the basic functions they need to survive. The organ that’s affected the most when there’s limited or no food is the hepatopancreas, which basically serves as a liver and digestive organ. It helps break down food and toxins and helps the snail absorb nutrients. When this organ fails, the snail is already at the pearly gates!
Inability To Recover
If your snail preserves itself past a week without food or survives through aestivation for a couple of weeks, there’s every chance that it may have passed its period of possible recovery. Even if they’re presented with food, they may be unable to restore the nutrients they’ve lost or be able to process food properly due to organ failure. This would then present more digestive issues like constipation and indigestion, furthermore leading to their death.
Death
The final stop, after a cruel and grueling phase with no food, is the mystery snail’s death. At some point, every snail that’s poorly taken care of will pass away. There’s no exact time within 14 days when the starved snail passes away; it depends on how healthy the snail is, the age of the snail, and the integrity of its environment.
If the snail enters aestivation, it can withhold dying until it has completely depleted its survival strategies and nutrient reserves. This could take anything from two weeks to a month after spending days without food.
3 Major Signs That Tell You Your Mystery Snail Is Dying
If you suspect that your mystery snail hasn’t been feeding well and it possibly starved past the stage of recovery, there are signs you can pick on that can sadly confirm your suspicions.
1. Reduced Activity
When a mystery snail is in hospice, you will notice a reduced level of activity going towards total inactivity. The snail will eat less, move around less, and be more enclosed in its shell than usual.
2. Little To No Responsiveness
Perhaps the regular touching and prodding makes your snail move in response, but when it’s dying, you’ll experience less and less of this sensitivity to touch. It may begin as slower responses until you get no reaction from the snail at all.
3. Loss Of Grip
The weaker the mystery snail gets, the harder it is to grip onto surfaces as it usually would. Usually, this is experienced with older snails before they reach the end of their existence. However, you will notice the loss of grip in your snail if it’s dying due to a sickness or in this case, starvation.
Caring For Your Mystery Snail While You’re Away On A Trip
If you’re planning on staying away from your mystery snails for more than four days, you must find a way to keep them fed. There’s no two ways around this. Either a kind person is willing to drop by and care for your pets, or you get an aquarium feeder (view on Amazon) to systematically feed your snails till you return.
Dropping food into the tank until your return is highly dangerous and will even kill your mystery snails faster than starvation would. When the food decays, ammonia and nitrite levels will spike causing the environment to be toxic. Aside from this, the snails will poop and pollute the tank adding to the decay and dirt buildup. It’s preferable and safer to get an aquarium feeder to ensure your snails are safe and sound.
The installation of the feeder is highly important to prevent the feeder from dumping excess food into the tank, which will then lead to decay and pollution. Ensure it’s properly latched to the tank before you take your trip.
If you have algae grown in the tank ( algae and not cyanobacteria) your snails can survive a good one week and a half without stress. Note that these measures only prevent your pets from starving to death, and are not necessarily a healthy solution to keeping them alive.
Can Mystery Snails Survive On Algae Wafers Alone?
Mystery snails are omnivorous, so they will certainly prefer a balanced diet of protein, mineral, and vitamin sources to survive. While some algae wafers comprise of the necessary value, it’s no match for the fresh nutritious foods such as veggies and shrimp that are fed to the snails. That being said, your mystery snails will not live long on algae wafers alone.
Sooner or later, your pet’s health will deplete making it even more difficult to assimilate more nutrients. Afterward, their shells start to thin and degenerate due to the lack of calcium causing more complications which further lead to them dying.
