Although aquatic snails have been very popular amongst fish keepers due to their algae eating properties for decades, keeping terrestrial snails as pets is increasing in popularity too.
With both terrestrial (land) and aquatic (water) snails needing a higher than average amounts of calcium for their body size to help maintain a strong and healthy shell, we often see people reaching out with questions about how they are able to get more calcium into their snail’s diets.
In our opinion, the best options are either snail calcium suppliments or depending on how many snails you have cuttlebone with both being excellent choices.
That said we often see people reaching out and asking how they are able to make calcium blocks for snails themselves as they want full control over the ingredients in their calcium blocks.
With calcium being such an important mineral for snails to have in their diet as well as due to seeing so many people asking for advice on how they are able to make their own calcium blocks, we have decided to publish our own article on the topic.
Our hope is that we will be able to help as many of our readers as possible offer their snails all of the calcium that they need in their diet to help keep their shells as strong and healthy as possible.
How To Make Calcium Blocks For Snails With Cuttlebone!
The easiest way to make your own calcium blocks for snails is to cut some chunks out of a cuttlebone to the size that you require and then use them as you need them.
This can work out to be very cheap and will often end up saving you money over just purchasing some pre-made calcium blocks.
This is usually recommended if you only have one single large snail or a small number of smaller snails as the majority of the time, you will be better off just giving your snails the full cuttlebone and letting them pick at it as they wish rather than trying to make your own calcium blocks for your snails.
As we covered in our article going over how to use cuttlebone for snails, there are a number of different ways that you are able to use it though.
Due to cuttlebone being so cheap, it is probably the best calcium source you are able to get to use for quick and easy DIY calcium blocks.
It can be tricky to cut the blocks down to size at first due to the cuttlebone being mostly calcium and easy to break but once you get the hang of it, you can usually cut them with ease to create your calcium blocks.
How To Use Liquid Calcium To Make Calcium Blocks For Snails!
You are able to quickly and easily make your own homemade calcium blocks for snails using a decent liquid calcium and some ice cube trays.
You simply add the liquid calcium to the ice cube trays and then leave the liquid calcium to oxidize and dry in the tray before popping a calcium block out when your snails need one.
This does tend to be the quickest and easiest way to make your own homemade calcium blocks if you are not on a budget but liquid calcium is surprisingly expensive considering what it actually is.
Especially when a cuttlebone pack is so cheap considering how much calcium you actually get in the package. The price of liquid calcium is the only reason this method of making calcium blocks was not first on our list but it is very easy and lots of people use it.
Some people will add a small amount of liquid calcium to their snail’s regular food rather than using it to make calcium blocks with though and this tends to work very well to and often takes less time and effort.
This is why some people are totally fine with the higher price tag of liquid calcium as you trade price for convenience and it does offer present a large number of ways that you are able to easily get calcium into your pet snails.
Using Ground Up Calcium Sources For Snail Calcium Blocks!
Some people do use ground up calcium sources such as ground-up coral or ground up eggshells for making their own calcium blocks.
Although the process sounds easy, it really isn’t and is often complicated and time-consuming with it usually being a pain to find a suitable binding agent to hold the coral or eggshell together.
If you are not working with pre-ground coral or eggshell then a cheap manual coffee grinder is usually the best way to grind the calcium source up into a fine substance before you add it to your binding agent.
It can be problematic to find a suitable binding agent that is safe for snails though with that adding another problem to the mix but the safest option is to try and use water. You basically mix the water with your calcium source and then put it in an ice cube tray and just leave it to dry but this is far from perfect.
This is why we feel that either of the options covered earlier in the article are much better options with cuttlebone being our default recommendation due to its low price and ease of use.
Instead of trying to make your own calcium blocks, we really would just recommend that you go with cuttlebone and be done with it.
Conclusion
That brings our article going over how to make calcium blocks for snails to an end. We hope that we have been able to help you understand how you are able to make DIY calcium blocks for your snails with all three methods that we covered above being popular. We personally feel that DIY calcium blocks are just a trend made popular on social media for other pets when the majority of our readers should be just using an actual calcium source due to it being so much easier.
