tigger is growing!

[Emmachan]

finally i seem to have got my tigers happy! I changed their tank so they are on their own, made it a lot moister and put the heat mat inside the tank. today i noticed tigger had grown new shell and they both been much much more active. for the past two months i have been trying to get them more active and now they finally seem to be doing stuff lol! im keeping the tank at about 30c now and they seem to be a lot happier.
ok! and they LOVE cucumber.. in fact they turn their noses up at everything else. anyway im really pleased to see them out and about more lol

[Paul]

Hi Emma,

I was hoping we could discuss this at more length, I have a number of questions. I have been trying to get a hotter tank and I have moved my tiger to a glass tank so the heat is transmitted from the mat better.

How big is your tank and what is it made of?

How big is your heatmat (size and wattage)?

How does it work inside the tank, do you fix it to the sides still because my heat-mats require pressure to heat up.

How do you get it to 30c? I was told by the person I got one of my margies from that 30c was what it preferred but I can't reach that temperature for love nor money. At the moment mine is at 24-26c, it is very humid though. My tiger is kind of lazy but he does move about, just not as much as it sounds yours do. With a bit of luck you may get eggs. In Africa, the season for this is marked by more heat and humidity so the fact that for 2 months they have been colder may encourage breeding. Fingers crossed!

My tiger won't eat much fruit and veg to be honest. It prefers cereal crops like chicken mash and hemp. It will eat a little courgette and it does like sweetcorn (never found a snail that doesn't) but cucumber is sniffed at. I think it is what they are used to. I read a paper that explained that Helix aspersa can remember the smell of food for 120 days and they will always favour familiar food first (hows that for a but of aliteration!). Perhaps that shop in Carlisle fed them mainly on cucumber and I am wondering if you can get them to eat a wider variety by not providing cucumber.

paul

[Emmachan]

Hi paul.
my tigers are currently in 4 gallon, plastic tank. they are on their own, no other snails. my heat mat is 12inches by 12 inches and inside the tank. at first i tried applying it to the outside of the tank but this wasnt making it warm enough as the heat was going out into the room. my heat mat does seem to require any form of pressure and i havent stuck it againt the wall. i use the substrate to hold the mat so its not touching either wall of the tank. this is cuz i figured all the heat would be warming the inside of the tank rather than the wall of the tank.
I have put a layer of that white stuff (its volcanic rock) that people use for holding water at the bottom of the tank. its helps to keep in lots of mosture. then is a layer of vermiculite and a layer of moss. The snails seem to love the moss.
My tigers are not huge now, but obviously i will have to get a bigger tank, and a bigger heat mat. i think the smallish tank helps to maintain the heat. Before they were in a bigger tank and i was having a lot of problem keep it warm enough.
basically u need a heat mat that is large in comparison with the tank. in the bigger tank the heat mat was covering less than half the area and wasnt sufficent.
when im in the money so to speak i wanna get a much larger heat mat, but they are not cheap! (my small one was £15) lol

[Emmachan]

when i said does* i ment doesnt! it doesnt seem to need pressure to work!

[Paul]

thanks for that information.

I was surprised when I moved to glass. Like you, I had problems with heat mats and plastic, the plastic insulates too well. But, when I used glass, it got very hot. Hot enough that when you spray on it, steam comes off. Now, the snails do move over it so it must be ok.

If you do get new heat mats you may find that they have to be pressed up against the side to heat up. The best thing is to force the heat one way using a thick layer of polystyrene/styrofoam on the outside. This helps a little with plastic and a lot with glass.

What is interesting is that even inside you're covering a lot of the tank. Breaking convention eh, I like it!

One thing I noticed is that at first the mat made absolutely no difference. I was disappointed. I made a makeshift lid with the only ventilation being that the tank was not covered for a thin strip down one side. I went away for 2 days and when I came back the temperature in the tank was a nice 27c. So, it needed time to heat up. And obviously the small amount of ventilation stopped the heat dispersing.

paul

[Emmachan]

I considered putting the heat mat inside the tank cuz my tiger need pretty high temperatures. my heat mat never gots crazily hot so its not harmful is a snail was to slime on it (i checked this out before i added snails) I also thought have direct heat on a moist substrate would help to increase the air moisture for the tigers. the tigers seem much happier with the new arrangement as tigger has shown by growing new shell. over the winter months they didnt grow at all and i was worried