# Trumpet Snails and PH



## colorxmexravyne (May 8, 2012)

_*if you don't want to read all of this, skip to the bolded section!_

So, long story short, I set up a 2.5 gallon NPT (kind of) about two weeks ago for a new betta fish and so far, so good. The plants are growing, my fish is (seemingly) happy; everything's doing well EXCEPT the four trumpet snails I plucked my 5 gal and dropped in my new tank. 

They don't have any physical signs of injury and my new betta has stopped picking on them since finding out they're not edible. These snails were doing fine in the 5 gal, but have become incredibly inactive now. Like, they will stay in the EXACT same place for three days straight. They don't move. At. all.

Two days ago, I decided to experiment. I took the snails out and put them in a little cup of water from my 5 gal. It took them one minute to get out of their shells and then they were back to crawling all over everything. I dropped them back in the 2.5 gal about an hour later and today they've barely moved despite me placing a piece of spinach in the tank for them to each.

With that, I figured there had to be something with the water chemistry in the 2.5 gal that wasn't sitting well with them, so I did some tests on both tanks. 

The tanks themselves are similar in all respects. Both are planted with MCOPM; the 5 gal is capped with Floramax while the 2.5 gal is capped with petco sand. Both tanks are usually heated to around 80* (with the same aqueon 50 watt heater), plus or minus one degree. The 5gal is filtered, but the 2.5 gal isn't.

*Neither tank has an ammonia or nitrite reading. The 5 gal has 5ppm nitrates, while the 2.5 gal has around the same (darker than 5ppm, but much lighter than 10ppm). The *only* difference between them is the pH. The 5gal has pH of around 7.6, but the 2.5 gal has a pH of 6.4.*

I *do* have a small piece of driftwood in my 2.5 gal, and I think I read online somewhere that they can alter the pH? So if that's the case, what are my options? Thanks in advance!


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## thekoimaiden (Oct 19, 2011)

Driftwood will lower pH. I have them in my tanks to help drop the pH since it's unusually high coming out of the tap. 

That being said, snails don't do well in low-pH water because it dissolves the shell. This might be your issue. The other possible issue is dissolved oxygen. Snails are rather sensitive to the stuff, so in a low DO environment they will be lethargic or simply die. I have found this especially true with my pond snails. My ramshorns appear less so and the Malaysian Trumpet Snails appear even less affected by it.


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## colorxmexravyne (May 8, 2012)

thekoimaiden said:


> Driftwood will lower pH. I have them in my tanks to help drop the pH since it's unusually high coming out of the tap.
> 
> That being said, snails don't do well in low-pH water because it dissolves the shell. This might be your issue. The other possible issue is dissolved oxygen. Snails are rather sensitive to the stuff, so in a low DO environment they will be lethargic or simply die. I have found this especially true with my pond snails. My ramshorns appear less so and the Malaysian Trumpet Snails appear even less affected by it.


Yeah, I noticed the one pond snail I dropped in there was dead the next day. I'm not sure if my betta killed it or what, but I guess I'll just put the snails back in my 5gal and manually poke the soil in the 2.5 then because now only two of the original four trumpet snails are alive. Thanks!


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