How to Tell if Aquarium Snail is Dead?

As you may know, aquarium snails aren’t exactly the most energetic and mobile animals on the planet. These animals don’t need to move fast, as they don’t require too much food to meet their nutritional needs.

So, they take their time exploring their surroundings, often opting for some well-deserved resting.

They also sleep occasionally or simply remain inactive for quite a while.

This often makes it difficult to differentiate between dead, dying, and alive snails, which can translate to potential environmental hazards.

Dead snails will decay in the water, causing ammonia spikes and affecting the rest of the lifeforms in the habitat.

So, how can you tell if your snail is dead or alive? Let’s have a look!

5 Signs Your Aquarium Snail is Dead

You will eventually tell whether your snail is dead or alive because the gastropod will eventually become to rot.

But you don’t want the situation to progress to that point which means you better diagnose your snail’s condition sooner.

Here are some markers to help you out.

– Snail is Not Moving

This is a pretty clear one. If your snail hasn’t moved for a while, it’s most likely dying or already dead. The problem is the timeframe at your disposal.

There is no relevant timeframe to explain the snail’s different periods of inactivity. Snails can sometimes lay dormant for hours, especially if they’ve eaten well and prefer to rest for a while.

So, this method isn’t exactly the most precise. But it does offer you something to work with, especially if the immobile snail is also tipped sideways or upside down, slowly dragged away by the water currents.

– Snail is Not Retracting

This is a pretty telling sign that your snail is no longer with the living. Snails are very sensitive animals with well-developed defensive reflexes.

They will react to your touch immediately and retract into their shell out of pure instinct.

If your snail doesn’t move and doesn’t react to the touch, consider it dead.

All snails should react to the touch, no matter their species, size, or any other marker.

– Floating

This is a confusing one because not all floating snails are dead and not all dead snails float.

In essence, most snails like to float at times which often suggests 1 of 2 things, possibly both:

• There isn’t enough food around them
• The water conditions lack quality

Both of these issues will stress your snail to the point where it will rise to the water’s surface. This is a behavior common among feral snails, as it allows them to move with the water currents which are stronger at the water’s surface.

This way, the water will carry them to different areas where snails would spend too much time to reach on their own.

However, if your snail spends too much time floating, that’s a sign that something’s not right. If your snail has been floating for quite a while, take it out of the water and check for any signs of activity inside the shell.

You can even try to touch the snail with a safe object to stir its reaction. If the snail looks inert, you might have a gastropod corpse on your hands. Literally.

– Loosen Trap Door

This is very easy to assess. The trap door in question is a thin dermal layer that protects the snail from anything going inside the shell.

All live snails have an intact trap door when hiding inside their shell; there are no exceptions to this rule.

If the snail is retracted in its shell but the trap door is open, there’s only one explanation – your snail is either dead or dying.

You can try to stir the snail a bit to gauge its reaction, as I’ve mentioned previously. If the snail doesn’t react, dispose of its body to prevent it from fouling the environment.

– It Smells Bad

This is generally the first sign that your snail is out of shape, sort of speak. Snails don’t have standard muscles, as the foot they use for locomotion comprises a viscous texture.

The rest of the body is made out of the interior organs located inside the shell. So, it’s safe to assume that snails decompose fast upon death and will release a ton of ammonia in the process.

You can typically feel the stingy odor soon after the snail’s passing and it should be the first thing you notice.

If your snail doesn’t move, doesn’t react to stimuli, or floats, pick it up and take a sniff. If your snail is dead, your olfactory system will let you know immediately.

In most cases, you won’t even need to smell the snail intentionally, as the odor will reach your nostrils whether you want to or not.

Given that snails decompose so easily upon death, I recommend investing in a water tester kit. This allows you to detect any ammonia and nitrite fluctuations in the water to prevent deadly environmental hazards.

If your snail has been dead for more than 24 hours, you might want to perform a partial water change to eliminate any excess ammonia that could destabilize the water’s chemistry.

Lifespan of Aquarium Snails

Snails are probably the most diverse animals in terms of lifespan.

They have various lifespans depending on where they live (in the wild or in captivity) and based on their diet, genetic makeup, and environmental temperature.

Here’s a chart to illustrate this point:

As you can see, most species will only reach 5 years for the most part, with some exceptions.

If you want to increase your snail’s lifespan, consider lowering its environmental temperature to its acceptable lower limit. This will slow down the snail’s metabolism, causing it to eat less and live longer.

The problem is that your snail will also be less active as it will try to conserve its energy. You can’t have one without the other.

Why do Aquarium Snails Die?

Aquarium snails are generally hardy animals, but they can deal with some health issues occasionally.

These can turn deadly in some cases, which is why you should always treat them with the utmost seriousness.

Here are some instances where snails may face issues:

Parasite or Disease

Snails can face a wide range of parasites, bacteria, and fungal infections, some of which are born from a combination of poor water conditions and physical injuries.

Such infections are highly contagious and can spread between snails and even from snails to other life forms present in the tank.

One such dangerous pathogen is schistosomiasis, an infectious worm that affects freshwater snails. This pathogen isn’t present in aquariums, generally speaking, but it can hitchhike its way in.

Wild-caught snails are among the most notorious vehicles of transmission, as many aquarists use these snails to feed their assassin snails, for instance.

These worms can also use live plants, driftwood, or rocks as vehicles which shows the importance of sterilizing everything before adding it to your tank.

If your snail shows any sign of infection, quarantine it immediately, verify the rest of the snails for any signs of infection and treat the water with antibiotics.

You might want to quarantine all snails until you figure out the culprit and whether their ecosystem has been compromised or not.

Poor Water Conditions

Aquarium snails aren’t particularly sensitive animals, but they require stable and clean waters to thrive.

Poor tank hygiene is most often the cause of dead snails, as these creatures can experience immunological problems in chemically unstable habitats.

Always monitor your tank water’s quality and set up a thorough maintenance routine with daily, weekly, and monthly goals.

You should always remove visible dead matter from the environment and perform water changes to keep the environment healthy and fresh.

Monitor and adjust oxygen levels and check the CO2, ammonia, and nitrate levels to keep everything in check.

Ammonia Poisoning

Ammonia poisoning is the most widespread cause of death among snails and fish alike.

As a novice aquarist, you should know that your closed aquatic ecosystem will always produce excess ammonia.

This chemical is the natural result of organic matter decomposing in the tank water. This could include fish waste, dead plant matter, food leftovers, dead bacteria, dead fish and snails, etc.

Another thing to consider is that there is no safe or acceptable amount of ammonia in the tank water.

Even the smallest traces can impact your aquatic life, especially the more sensitive guests that may exhibit physiological overreactions to the chemical.

Such is the case of aquarium snails which can experience ammonia shock soon after being subjected to the chemical.

To manage ammonia levels in the tank, consider:

• Removing food leftovers and any traces of dead or decaying matter daily
• Vacuuming the substrate to eliminate fish waste and excess snail mucus, and prevent the formation of anaerobic pockets (in the case of sand substrates)
• Sticking to a one-water-change-per-week routine (no more than 20-25% of the total water volume in one session)
• Investing in a water tester kit for regular water testing
• Monitoring water parameters to detect any chemical imbalance in time

Shell Damage

Shell damage occurs pretty much for 3 reasons:

• Calcium deficiency due to improper diets
• Natural degradation with age (not much you can do about this one)
• Physical trauma caused by other tank inhabitants

The shell is unlikely to break with ease, especially if the snail is young, healthy, and strong. But it can happen.

The cause is more likely the rough interaction with more aggressive tankmates that could poke at the snail, either out of curiosity or because they want to eat them.

This is why it’s always critical to housing your snails with compatible tankmates that won’t threaten their safety.

The snail’s diet is also vital in this sense. Calcium deficiencies are common in captive snails either due to improper diets, insufficient food, or poor water parameters.

Aquatic snails typically get most of their calcium from the water column itself. The ideal calcium concentration sits between 70-90mg/liter.  

This may vary depending on the snail species, but usually not by much.

Old Age

Snails will eventually grow old, making death inevitable past a certain point.

The key here is to know your snail’s lifespan so you prepare for when the timer reaches the end. Snails can’t tell you when they’re about to die, they’ll just die.

This can cause some serious problems if you don’t see it coming and your dead snails linger too much in the water.

As I’ve already mentioned, snails decay fast once they’re dead and can flood the tank water with ammonia and other death-related chemicals.

Dying Snails are a Bad Sign for Aquarium

You should always monitor your snail population due to these creatures’ extreme sensitivity to ammonia.

That’s because one dead snail can easily trigger a cascade of death resulting in a complete eradication of your snail population. The excess ammonia will also destroy your fish population, which is even more incentive to keep an eye on things.

Especially since ammonia levels will literally explode with just a couple of dead snails laying around long enough.

What to do With Dead Aquarium Snails?

I would say you have 2 options in this sense:

• Dispose of the snail – Place the snail in a ziplock back, seal it, and throw it in the garbage. If you’re worried about the snail’s odor attracting other animals or even pets, place the ziplock bag in the freezer for several hours. The corpse will freeze which will eliminate the smell temporarily until it unfreezes. Just make sure you don’t place the ziplock bag next to your own food.
• Repurpose the snail – This option is only relevant if you have the stomach for it. In short, you should use a sharp tool to remove the snail’s body from inside the shell. Then you need to wash the interior of the shell thoroughly to make sure there’s no organic matter left. Then you can use the shell as a decorative element in your tank. Hermit crabs will thank you if you have any, but smaller fish can use it as a hiding spot just as easily as well.

What Eats Dead Aquarium Snails?

There isn’t anything in particular that will feed on a dead snail precisely because the snail becomes literally toxic after death.

A decaying snail will release ammonia shortly after passing, making it unfit for consumption for most tank inhabitants.

You can use loaches and some species of cichlids to manage your snail population, but these fish prefer to eat the snails while still alive.

It’s better to just check your snails’ status daily and dispose of the dead one(s) as soon as you discover them.

Conclusion

Nobody wants their snails to die suddenly, but this may very well happen. As we’ve discussed, it’s important to know what to do in such a circumstance.

If you’re unsure whether your snail is dead, resting, or about to die, remove it from the environment and check it out for a while.

If the snail refuses to get out of its shell to eat, despite being alive, its clock may be running out of spins.

Be pragmatic about it and remove the dying snail from the environment before its actual death. It’s always preferable to be safe rather than sorry.