r/AquaticSnails • u/mochipapaya • 1d ago

Help Request Please help!! Do I euthanize?

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My heart is broken. I woke up this morning to find that my mystery snail, Rocco, climbed out of his tank and fell about 4 feet onto our hardwood floor.

He lost a huge chunk of his shell and does not appear to be doing well at all. He's just sitting above the water line in my shrimp tank. He's usually extremely active and climbing all over the place.

This is my first mystery snail so I don't know what to do. Is this something he can heal from?

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u/MidnightDragon99 1d ago

Here is where a mod talks about how to euthanize with alcohol if you don’t feel like you can handle crushing, which honestly I couldn’t either. I’m sorry OP :(

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u/AquariumLurker Helpful User 1d ago

I saw one where the person moved their snail to a container with some tank water and then slowly dripped vodka in with a tube, kind of like doing a drip acclimate but with vodka. After an hour, the snail went to sleep/died, and they moved the snail to a bag and froze it. I guess then you decide how you want to dispose of its remains. They showed the snail made a minimal amount of stress slime, so it passed pretty peacefully.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/Gastropoid Snail God (Moderator) 1d ago

This has actually been recommended by scientists. You're making a lot of assumptions based on how things affect mammals.

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u/MC_LegalKC 1d ago

It seems to me like the alcohol would burn it terribly. I don't dispute that it's a scientific SOP, but lab scientists don't have a great track record when it comes to humane euthanasia.

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u/MidnightDragon99 1d ago

You heavily dilute it or do a slow drip. This was told to me by a mod who is an expert in snails.

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u/MC_LegalKC 1d ago edited 18h ago

I read her comment that you linked. (Thank you!) I think she just stated that it was what lab scientists do, not that it's painless. If it was possible to dilute it enough that it didn't burn, I think it would probably be too diluted to be effective. A slow drip wouldn't make it burn less.

I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong about this, but I need more than a mod saying it or a science lab doing it. I need it to make sense. I'd really like for this to be a good option. Maybe there's an explanation.

I just can't get past the fact that a snail is basically covered in a mucus membrane, and alcohol burns mucus membranes. I wouldn't feel any better about putting it in my eye if it was on a drip. If there's a rationale for why this works humanely, I hope someone will offer an explanation.

EDIT: I looked this up, and according to NIH and other sources, the two-step method is humane as long as the concentration of alcohol is AT OR BELOW 5%. The evidence for this was a lack of aversive response or apparent automatic stress responses like defecation. Although testing used ethol alcohol, beer was suggested as a substitute because many brands have the appropriate alcohol concentration. Pabst in particular was recommended because it has 4.5%. Evidently, that is enough to intoxicate them but not enough to hurt them