Today while cleaning my daughters aquarium i noticed her pet Apple snail had a severely damaged operculum. A portion had cracked and fallen off, with another fracture over the remaining portion of the plate connected to the foot.

The snail is fairly old around 3 years, and has never had any issues with tankmates, which are 6 white cloud minnows, and 2 Ram Cichlids. The tank is and has always been stable without any issues in the past, 0 ppm NH3/NH4, 0ppm NO2-, 0-10 Nitrates. I have dissolved small pieces of my parrots cuttle bone (clean, unused pieces that came broken in the package) every 2 weeks or so after a water change to ensure there is always available calcium for it.

I suspect it got stuck between the drift and caused this injury upon itself, its the only thing I can really think of, regardless, is there anything that I can do to assist the snails recovery? Will the operculum ever come back into 1 piece, or better yet re-grow entirely? It is still as active as always, and could have sustained this injury quite a while ago without me noticing.

Thanks in advance.

i've had one like that, it lived fine until it's death and while new growth was formed it never appeared to fix the damage. i did have to move mine though because it was with fish who picked at it and with the chip missing it seemed like a good idea to move him.
i HAVE seem people put material on the shell and glue it, um, but i think if it touched the snail body that would not work!

Glueing a piece of acrylic shaped the same as the former piece would be something i could mange, if this would actually help him get by in life. Does anyone else have experience with this sort of solution? Performing the task would not be difficult for me, I could set up a quarentine for him if it was actually worth doing.

aren't you a good animal keeper here is a link to shell repair, i hope it helps
Applesnail.net • View topic - When to patch