Mystery Snails Escaped and Dried Up a Lot

Hello!
Seeking some help for my poor mystery snail friend.

I’m running a 26g bow front tall, tropical community tank - established for 6 ish months now. My biggest mystery snail escaped the tank after I accidentally made the water level too high during a top off. I have no clue how long he was out of the tank, I found him last night when I was getting supplies out from under the tank to do a bit of maintenance. Shell was totally dry and gently tapping on his trap door there was a little resistance but not much.

I quickly filled a carrier box with tank water and floated it in the tank. After an hour he opened a little but there was a lot of cloudy gunk/fuzz (assuming damaged tissue and slime from drying out too much).
I laid him on his side spiral up to help in case he wanted to open up. Since then he’s opened a little and closed a little when his carrier was jostled slightly.

Tank parameters are pretty solid, ph 7.0, ammonia and nitrite 0, nitrate between 0 and 5ppm (closer to zero). GH 7 KH 4. Tank temp is set 75°F but it’s been chilly so the tank is actually at 73.5 right now

I’m guessing this is a waiting game to see if he has the strength to heal but I definitely think there’s damage to his appendages and his foot is wrinkly. I put a tiny piece of a sinking wafer but I think he’s too weak to eat.

This morning after verifying that he still was alive (gently squeezed a little water on him with a dropper under water to see if he would move) I switched him to a carrier w holes so that he would get water flow and not sit in stale water.

Any advice on what to do or look for would be greatly appreciated. I really hope he makes it

 

Welcome to Fishlore and I'm sorry that happened. He's beautiful!

 

Welcome!

It is a waiting game. You can give it a sniff every now and then. It will smell awful if its dead. Sometimes snails can be out for quite a while. Always put them back in water to see first! I hope the little guy makes it!

 

Thanks folks, he was so happy too. From getting him til now I didn’t even know they could get so big. 24hrs since finding him and he’s still sad looking but alive.

 

Cool snail!
Snails are weird, he could recover and I hope he does! Cover up any gap in the lid so it doesnt happen again.
You could make some Snello to help him regrow/heal. It might seem like a big thing to do for one snail, but the fish could eat it if he doesnt.

Get some plain gelatin, follow the directions but use half the water. add things such as -
very finely chopped or blended veggies, fruit, boiled egg, spirulina powder, cricket powder, dandelion powder, tums ground to a powder.

 

Cool snail!
Snails are weird, he could recover and I hope he does! Cover up any gap in the lid so it doesnt happen again.
You could make some Snello to help him regrow/heal. It might seem like a big thing to do for one snail, but the fish could eat it if he doesnt.

Get some plain gelatin, follow the directions but use half the water. add things such as -
very finely chopped or blended veggies, fruit, boiled egg, spirulina powder, cricket powder, dandelion powder, tums ground to a powder.

Oh nice, I hadn’t seen any suggestions online for foods that help them. I’ll look into this further, thanks for sharing!

I’ll definitely be getting a couple pieces of plexi glass this weekend to make a custom lid now that I know this is possible. There haven’t been any escapes the last 5 months so I was super surprised

 

That's why I stopped keeping them, I use to breed them and needed to keep the level low, they would come up out of the water lay there eggs and keep on crawling, behind the 40 long in my shop is about 5-6 dried up shells [in a area that I can not get to].
Good luck with him , when I did it I would smell it every day, and if it dieing you nose will tell you.