For years I’ve fought with my snails. Well my lightning bolt nerites specifically. The zebra never cared about being out of the water but the lightning bolts will always come up and out. At first I’d just put them back in the water but I could legit tell they were mad at me for that. So I stopped.

I upgraded and got a good 10g aquarium (shrimp king by denerelle) with a good and tight glass lid. Keeps evap minimal. Shrimps like that.

There was a hole in the lid so you can pick it up. They escaped thru finger hole. I tried specially made snail deterrents that looked like vasaline. Rubbed it around the hole. They laughed as they put their shell down and scraped it off the glass and kept going. Little scraping bulldozers they are. Had to use a cork. That worked.

So I kept the cork on and they still spend a good deal of time out of the water. Dropped the water levels down a few inches to give them some extra space to get away from the water.

Parameters are great and well within ranges. I keep primarily shrimp (neo cardinia, with experience with brine shrimps, fresh water community, eels, frogs, etc) so the waters used are RO and proper remineralization. PH, GH, KH, ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, ppm, salinity, etc.

This is just a quark of this certain breed it seems. I’ve read that some of these nerites are “tidal snails” and some of them want to dry out for weeks at a time! With this in mind I wondered if mine wanted to do this too.

If I leave the cork OFF the hole, 80% of the time I’ll find them on the floor a day or two later. I fear it’ll get stepped on one day. I don’t want that. I’ve had them for years.

Anyway, I was sipping coffee the other morning and got an idea. To work *with them and not against them. I figured a way to allow me to leave the hole open so they can get out of the humid tank air but remain contained in a way that dry air can dry them as they want but a screen would keep them from going off the edge and allow for a simple way back into the tank when they want.

I made a cage of sorts using a new reusable coffee filter and some poster putty to keep it in place and keep the snails safe while they finally dry out properly. I installed it 3 days ago.

Today when I came home from work I was elated to see one basking up in the air, safe and sound in its own little dry tank.

Just wanted to share my story and experience. Can’t help but laugh that the idea is working and feel great to have finally found a compromise.