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Enclosure sizes
What size enclosure should I use to house my snail? I have a huge fish tank, can i use that?
It depends on the size and species of your snail.
From our experience, housing a young or baby snail in a large tank would NOT give it the best chance of growing to a large size.
Snails, in captivity, will generally do much better when reared in small enclosures and upgraded and upsized as they grow.
If adding a small/growing or baby snail in an enclosure that is too large will highly likely stunt the growth of the snail and have a negative effect on its overall health.
This is due to the fact that snails need lots of energy to grow, they need to consume all of the necessary nutrients and minerals in order to grow their bodies and add/make a shell at the same time.
When the enclosure is too large they can waste lots of time and energy just moving around the enclosure not finding enough food, leaving little or no energy left to add growth because they have not consumed enough energy.
But why do snails grow fine in the wild in a very large open space?
Snails, in the wild, do not live in the same conditions as captive-bred snails.
In captivity, we generally keep them in plastic or glass enclosures.
If you observe your snail whilst it is moving around the glass or plastic, you will generally see their mouths rasping at glass or plastic. You may have also felt this on your skin if you have handled a snail before.
This is how they generally move around on all surfaces, rasping and consuming everything in their path. Snails can find and extract nutrients from almost anything they consume as their digestive systems are amazing!
Everything is food and a nutrient in the wild!
When keeping snails in captivity, keepers generally keep them on sterile nutritionless substrates such as coco coir etc. This type of substrate is great as it's cheap, easy to use and helps create humidity but resists mould and can last a long time before it needs to be changed.
The combination of this type of substrate and glass walls has no nutrition at all, this is one of the reasons why you need to keep your snail close to an actual real food source such as fruit, vegetables and herby, leafy greens.
We also recommend the use of leaf litter, moss and our herby toppers.
Our Nettle Leaf toppers as great for sprinkling around the enclosure too in small amounts, Nettle leaves are one of the most nutritious leaves on the planet and are great for rearing snails.
Using a smaller enclosure will ensure that they are close to food all of the time!
But how can I heat a small enclosure? the heat mat is too big!
We would recommend that you set up your secondary size enclosure that you will release your snails into when they are large enough.
Our most popular sizes of the secondary enclosure are our 13-20L sizes.
These are large enough to fit a 7 watt heat mat and are ideal for housing a 3-5L enclosure inside of them temporarily.
This will help to create an essential microclimate that you snail will need to thrive.
I've got a wooden vivarium and an Exo-Terra vivarium, Which is best?
Most wooden vivarium are constructed from laminatated chipboard and are not suitable for high humidity applications. Wooden vivariums will start to absorb water and start to rot away, fall apart and be a breeding ground for bacteria. Therefore, they are not suitable for housing snails.
Exo-Terra vivariums or similar styles can be used and look great, especially when set up with a natural look but they do have their downfalls and will require some modifications to be made more suitable.
These types of enclosures usually have a full mesh type lid. This is great for certain reptiles etc that require lots of ventilation. This mesh lid makes them impossible to maintain any kind of humidity and any heat just raises up and escapes through the mesh. It's best to block off around 95% of the mesh to aid humidity and temperature. However, This can make them difficult to clean and therefore risk the build-up of bacteria.
We do use a few of the Exo-Terra enclosures ourselves and we find the best way to clean them is with a steam cleaner in hard to reach parts such as the front ventilation strip and for cleaning the mesh.
Plastic boxes are great for snails, they are generally easier to heat than glass and easier to maintain humidity. They are cost-effective, mobile and easy to clean.
The downfall of plastic boxes is that they don't look as good as
purpose-made glass vivariums.
Ideal, budget starter kit for snails. Click here for more info.
Do you offer an aftercare service?
Yes, we will continue to assist you with anything you need to help you care for your new pet.
We love to assist and help our customers in any way we can.
We understand that some things may be confusing to beginners, we are here to help you to get things correct so that you can be confident in your care choices.
We can assist with housing solutions and suggest options to suit you, your pet and your budget.
We are always here if you have any queries once you receive your live items or dry goods
info@bugznbits.co.uk Freephone 0800 0842 718
Snail sizes!
Depending on where you look and who you speak to you will get different information on how large a certain type of snail should and could grow to.
Yes, it's very true that there are lots of poor quality, stunted snails in the hobby, such as fulica and reticulata due to their popularity and ease of breeding.
Reticulata (with fulica a close second) is one of the worst affected and stunted snails in captivity due to the lack of new wild-caught snails entering the hobby, they are near impossible to import from South Africa. True captive-bred sizes should be reaching around 150mm in shell length but 100-130mm is more common in the hobby today, with 180mm+ easily reachable in the wild.
Breeding/egg-laying of the 2 above species often occurs by accident, then people then need to get rid of the offspring, this, in turn, can lead to poor quality snails, they are simply not checked or bred to any kind of quality and are often inbred from directly related snails.
There are lots of misinformation posted over the sizes of snails. For example, the statement "fulica in the hobby are not as big as they should be due to irresponsible breeding".
Yes, this is true as mentioned above. However, there are statements in the internet stating that fulica should be "200-300mm in shell length"
This is simply not true and is greatly exaggerated misinformation.
Wild fulica snails in Africa today grow to an average size of around 120mm in shell length. Obviously, there are larger specimens but they rarely grow over 140mm+
There are odd ones that can grow larger, this is true with most animals of the world. This is a natural occurrence and has nothing to do with irresponsible captive breeding.
Fulica can also be found in Madagascar which are generally larger on average than their African cousins, they have even reached places as far as Asia and Hawaii (USA) with Indonesian fulica only reaching around 70-90mm as wild adults.
This size exaggeration is also true for snails such as the Archachatina ovum. The word ovum in a snails name is often gives the expectation of huge monster 150-200mm+ snails. Again, this is simply not true and it is true there is more ovum in the wild with an average size of 120-140mm and are more common than these 200mm+ snails, this makes sizes of 200mm+ rare and 150mm+ less common but there are out there.
Also, there are many variations of ovum and snails such as albino, leucistic and silver morphs are usually in the 120-140mm category with snails over 140mm very rare but still possible.
The end size of snails in captivity can vary greatly. Usually, wild snails will always grow larger than captive-bred snails and offspring from 200mm ovums are not likely to reach these sizes. There are many reasons why captive snails may not grow as large as their wild cousins and could be down to diet, housing, natural growth variations, lack of seasonal changes in captivity or simply down to incorrect husbandry in some cases.
Archachatina marginata ovum adult at 206mm in shell length and weighing in at 1.3kg
Heating snail enclosures
Depending on where you look you will see lots of different information regarding temperatures to house snails. Lots of this is posted on the internet by people with little or no experience but remains there for everybody to read forever. This misinformation can cause real problems for new snail keepers and even advice from Facebook and other online snail groups/forums can be based on misinformation and recycled thousands of times until it becomes so-called "common knowledge" and then new keepers and old think its actually the best and correct way to keep your snails.
Here we would like to offer advice on the best ways we have found to heat snail enclosures and the safest ways to maintain them.
Yes, it's very true that places such as Nigeria, Africa can reach temperatures of 38c plus in the height of the dry season. In these conditions, snails are not active and are buried and hidden away from these temperatures. During the wet season, the majority of snails would usually only emerge in the evening when it cools down and then diging themselves back in before the morning sunrise.
In captivity, it is a fact that snails do not need to be kept at such high temperatures in order to thrive, grow and reproduce.
There are many ways to heat your snails enclosure.
Ideally, we recommend ambient daytime temperatures of around 24-26c max with a drop of a few degrees in the nighttime. To achieve this you would need to heat your whole room. In most cases this is not practical and an expensive way to heat your snails.
We use this method and heat our facility to daytime temps of 24-26c and a low of a minimum of 22c in the evening. This is provided via heated walls and is thermostatically and time-controlled. In most domestic cases this is not practical and an expensive way to heat your snails. This is where heat mats can be used.
When using heat mats we recommend setting them slightly higher than the recommended temperatures, for example, if your snail should be kept at 25c you can set your heat mat to around 28-29c, This will only create a warm spot of 28-29c and will not heat your whole enclosure to these temperatures.
Heat mats cannot heat your whole enclosure and are not designed to do so.
We do not recommend the use of under tank heating when it comes to snails. Snails will naturally bury themselves and hide to get away from heat and cool down. By heating the substrate you are taking this natural ability away from them and can cause huge problems or even the death of your snail. Therefore we recommend heat mats to be attached to the back or sides of enclosures and fit the largest heat mat that will physically fit and the warmest part (the heat mat) and the cooler parts (furthest away from the heat mat) are monitored and managed accordingly.
As long as you have your heat mat set correctly then the rest of the enclosure will be and should be much cooler. We recommend a minimum ambient temperature of around 18c (coolest spot), if your ambient temperatures are lower than 18c a secondary heat source may be required.
If you would like to heat your enclosure to a similar temperature throughout then we recommend the use of a heat cable.
We get asked all the time if we can use heat bulbs or similar reptile heating equipment. The simple answer is NO as this will likely eat away at humidity and overheat the snail and in the worst case, burn the snail should it be allowed to come into contact with the heater.
DO NOT USE HEAT SOURCES THAT CREATE A WARM SPOT (surface temperature) OF MORE THAN 35C. THIS COULD POSSIBLY BURN OR HARM YOUR SNAIL!
If you are unsure about your set up and need any advice, just drop us an email with you order number accompanied by photos of your existing set-up and we will be more than happy to help! info@bugznbits.co.uk
The suggested layout of thermometer and thermostat probes
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