#and my 6 miniscule hatchling snails are down to 3 2inch long healthy juveniles

[dracolizardlars]

I am sad to report that my snail Phoenix has passed away :(

He got his name from the fact that when he was smaller he went through not one, but two periods where he didn't move for weeks at a time and I assumed he was probably dead, only for him to eventually wake up. Because of these long periods of inactivity, his growth has been behind his siblings for a long time.

But for the last couple of months, Phoenix had appeared to be acting completely normally and had grown a lot. I thought he might eventually catch up with his siblings, but always was aware he was probably a "runt" from the beginning and might have something invisible wrong with him.

A couple of days ago I was doing some maintenance on my snail's tank and two of them were AWOL, so, as I had done tons of times before (mostly when they were younger), I sifted through the soil with my hands to find them and get them out. But then I touched something that crunched... For whatever reason, as my hand encountered Phoenix where he was sleeping in the soil, part of his shell came away...

It was the rim area of the shell that had basically peeled away in layers like onion skin. Since there was no obvious damage to his body, I still had a fair bit of hope that he would be able to survive it (I've seen on r/snails that snails can recover from MUCH worse-looking shell injuries than that), and put him in a corner of the tank to see if he could recover from the shock and go back to living his little snail life.

Sadly, it was not to be. He hadn't moved since then, and this time I know for absolute certain that Phoenix is no longer with us: part of his "foot" is exposed, and it doesn't recoil from me when I poke it. It seems that whatever happened to his shell was too much for my little survivor to deal with.

I genuinely don't blame myself much for what happened when I dug him out of the soil, because snail shells definitely aren't supposed to do that so there must've been something wrong with it before I picked him up and caused it to break off. I tried my best with the little runt of the litter, kept giving him chances when it seemed like he was done for, but sometimes it just doesn't work out.

I started with 6 hatchling snails and lost two very early on, which didn't affect me because it's expected for an animal that has hundreds of offspring at a time, but Phoenix is the first one who lived long enough to have a name and a personality. I always kept myself ready for this to happen due to him being a runt so I'm not too devastated but I'm gonna miss the little fella and I'm really sad he couldn't overcome whatever was holding him back.

Rest in peace, my smallest snaby.