---
title: Miniature awlsnail in a terrarium | Glass Jar Garden
description: Miniature awlsnail (Subulina octona): A tiny land snail that cleans up rot. One can start a colony. Needs eats litter 1.5 mg/day each, eats mould 0.2 mg/day...
url: https://glassjar.garden/guide/critters/subulina-octona/
---

Critters

# Miniature awlsnail
Subulina octona

Closed jar only · Grazes plants

A tiny land snail that cleans up rot. One can start a colony.

## What the simulation uses

- Eats litter: 1.5 mg/day each (Dead leaves one animal shreds a day, turning them back into soil.)

- Eats mould: 0.2 mg/day each (Mould one animal grazes a day, keeping fuzz and grey mould down.)

- Colony at most: 200 per m² (How many the floor can feed when food is plentiful; less food, fewer.)

- Starving loses: 2 % a day (How fast a colony thins when the jar cannot feed it.)

- Eats: decaying plant, biofilm, algae, fungi, calcium sources (Foods it lives on; the jar feeds it from whichever of these it has.)

- Humidity: 80 to 100 % RH (Air moisture it needs.)

- Temperature: 20 to 30 °C (Comfortable range; beyond it the colony suffers.)

- Doubles in: 67.5 days (Time for the colony to double with plenty of food.)

- Lives: 547.5 days (How long one animal lives.)

## Care

- Size: 10 to 20 mm

- Moisture: Moist

## What kills it

- drying (seals aperture, dies if prolonged)
- temps below ~15 C
- calcium deficiency (thin shells)

## Description
Common in greenhouses, it grazes algae, debris and the film on glass. When numbers climb it may rasp seedlings and soft leaves. Keep it warm and moist, and give it a calcium source so its shells stay strong.

Also called awl snail, eight-whorl awlsnail.

Estimated, where sources were thin: size_mm; breeding (all fields); lifespan_days; diet; eats_live_plants severity; Allopeas gracile source is a congener-type proxy with no life-history data.

## Sources

- [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subulina_octona](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subulina_octona)
- [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allopeas_gracile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allopeas_gracile)

[Grow it in a jar](https://glassjar.garden/?guide=critters/subulina-octona)

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