Is your aquarium looking a bit uncultured? Turn your aquarium from crapper to dapper with tissue cultures from Joe shrinkshak.com. Now 50% off with promo code. Plant sale. That's two words plant sale at checkout.
Please, sir, may I have another tissue culture? Why, of course. Your tank look like a fenny. Make it look fancy with 15% off at all other goods with supremo code and aquarium guides at checkout.
The tank needs to look stank. Buy tank with Joel today.
Also, don't forget about our boys at the Ohio Fish Rescue. Buy them a pint by going to their YouTube channel. And donate.
Don't forget the lads over at the Ohio Fish Rescue. Those rambunctious Yankees are doing bang up work assisting rockefeller fish on rotten racks.
Ohio Fish Rescue is here to give fish a bigger home. And it's up to you to give Big Rich a bigger shampoo like and subscribe today. And let's kick that pop first. Welcome to the Aquarium, guys. Podcast with your hosts, Jim colby and Rob olson. Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. We are supposed to be quarantining, but Jimmy decided to come over one more week. He's getting a microphone. We're getting them all set up. How you doing, Jimmy? You don't want coffee?
I'm wonderful.
No hacking, no wheezing.
Not that you can prove.
All right, we have a gallon of Perrell to put on you later.
Oh, I thought that was this lube.
I mean, your party. That's what I'm saying. It might burn. It might burn on the scratches.
No, it will not.
Well, welcome, guys, to the podcast. I'm your host, Rob Zulson.
I'm Jim colby.
And I'm Adam El nashar.
What's so funny, Adam? Are you okay over there, buddy?
He's in a mood. No more folgers coffee commercial before the podcast.
No more putting chicken feathers in your underwear.
That either. Anyone would do that to be quite fair and honest.
It's soft.
It is. So, today, what we have with us we don't have a guest, but we have to introduce our new editor, Scrap Joe. How are you doing, buddy?
I'm doing pretty well, fellas. How about yourselves?
So, how does it feel being like the young Jamie of the podcast? It feels great. Where are you from?
I am from Ohio.
So he has nothing better to do because number one is in Ohio. Yeah, number one basketball season got closed, and that's their only good amount of sports because Lord knows they don't have any football.
Well, lebron left, so he went to La. So Ohio literally hasn't.
Isn't betty White live in Ohio?
What?
I'm not sure they have the Ohio Fish Rescue. Otherwise, it's pretty much that's about it.
In the Columbus Zoo, right?
Yeah, there's a lot of, like, fish people because there's nothing better to do.
Wow. It's kind of like North Dakota, where I'm from.
No, they have meth there.
No, we don't.
I was just there.
Trust me, we can't afford it.
Their teeth are missing for some reason everywhere. Well, moving on from the terrible jokes, we got some clean up to do. Let's start with your question, Jimmy. We ignored one of our audience members because you didn't log into discord, but we're going to get that question done.
Why did you shave your head? That's the question I've got right now.
Because your daughter in law decided to close her beauty shop in concern of COVID-19. So I have now lost my hair.
The state of Minnesota says you guys are all closed and we're all closed right now in Minnesota, the coronavirus is kicking butt through here. Our governor just went into quarantine. Our senator, Amy klobuchar, who ran for president here just up to a little bit ago. Her husband's in not good shape.
Oh, I thought that was because of a mob. I didn't know that was COVID-19.
No, he's like coughing up blood.
Oh, no, he's in that. He's bad. He's not doing well. We have a lot of people in our government that are fighting this and stuff, so I guess we got to quit making fun of it because this is getting real serious, folks.
Stay safe, stay indoors and listen to podcasts.
There you go.
What's the question?
The question I got for top skyrocket, is that who it is? I'm going to say top secret.
I say topcret. I don't know how to pronounce it. So give us he's on discord. He's one of our most loyal fans and now we're butchering his name.
Yeah, that's okay.
Top secret.
Top secret. There we go. He goes, have you ever seen angel fish pair up with the same sex? I have had angel fish, especially females pair up. robs has had a pair of males that have paired up together, but I've had a pair of angel fish females and they would both go up to laying eggs. And I couldn't believe the first time I saw it, I go, wow, I got 700 eggs. That's pretty damn good. And then they didn't hatch and I was and this happened two or three times. And when I started actually physically watching them lay eggs the third time I noticed that they both were laying eggs at the same time. So, yeah, it does happen.
Well, from going into your breeding room, I've seen two males and a female. I've seen two females and a male. I've seen two females together. But then at my house when I got a bunch of tanks, we got my big tank with a bunch of angels, two, a normal pair male and a female bread in the corner. And on the other side of the tank, I had two males going at it, literally a blank slate. Two males melting all over it.
Yeah. What happens is the hormones get fired up in that tank and everybody goes crazy. It's like when they drop angel dust at disco. 54. Back in the day in New York City, when people were all dancing during the disco, they would actually drop cocaine from the ceiling. So people would kind of be starting that and getting crazy. Crazy.
That explains so much of the 80s.
Well, that and it's really our fault, Jimmy, because we don't have angel dust for aquariums. We just got to stop wearing assets chaps in front of our aquariums.
That's you. I don't have asphalt's chaps, unfortunately.
Well, then what's with the train whistle?
Yeah, that's another story. My God, it's got off track. It quick. Usually we get 15 minutes in before this happens.
So, yes, if you have gay angel fish, it's decently common. Don't be concerned that you have some.
Just accept them and love them indeed.
For the fish that they are. All right, next.
Won't all fish just be gay or lesbian?
No, I can't get rainbow fish to do that. It's mainly like you can't get them to do that.
You're paying them all.
Light bears are totally gay.
Yeah, light bears will do anything.
Light bears are like, are you moving? And they'll just give it a go. They will. You can watch. It like, I have puffer fish in there pissing off continually because it's just something that can remind me of my.
High school days, right.
Just running around in those chaps. Next question. I have Rex message us in again. Hey, guys. We started listening to the podcast again. I got caught up. Love listening to your podcast on episode four. Is there any other fish that keep the snails down? Jack dempsey when they are young, akaras as well. But since I put dempsey in the cars, I haven't had a snail sighting. So he's asking, what other fish eat snails? Well, I think this should be the snail podcast today.
Let's do a snail podcast. Yeah.
From top to bottom. You've inspired this whole episode, sir, and we're going to kick this off.
Well, I think clown loaches are pretty good at eating snails.
Pretty much any loaches besides, like, a chain loach or a panda loach, if it's just a traditional loach, even, like, dojo loaches, weather loaches, devour them, hunt them down, suck out the innards, no matter how big the snail. Yeah, I had a what was it? Smaller than baseball size mystery snail.
That was hilarious.
I thought, oh, there's no way loach is going to go after it. One loach smaller than it sucked it out from the inside and you cried. I mean, it's a mystery snail. I'm not crying that day. So let's go down the list and talk snails today.
Let's go down the trail, put them.
In water right there's. Your best keeping secrets. Maybe add heat if you feel like it.
Don't.
Snails. If you want to feel good about keeping an aquarium, get some snails. Right. You can't go wrong with snails. Now, there are delicate snails out there, but for the most part, snails are hell of forgiving. And when I grew up, I always had the wives tale from my grandmother and my mother that snails come with disease. What do you say about that, Jimmy?
I think they're wrong. I've never had any disease from snails.
Where did the wives tale come from? Because you're forgiven. Grandmother 90s. Everybody that go to a pet shop, oh, no, snails have disease. Was it misinformation?
It's from robbie's grandmother. She's old and she's a senile, and she's telling people that happens.
Poor grandma.
No.
Okay, so I can kind of tell where this say where this comes. So what will happen is when people go to a pet store and you buy that snail or to a regular store and maybe not necessarily a good pet store, you always know how there's a bad snail in the tank. Jim knows, and then they stink. Well, sometimes pet store people, pet store employees that don't know what the hell they're doing will throw that in the bag, and then you take it and you just go, oh, because sales float and they throw it in float.
When the sales float, nails will float.
Do they fart in their shell and they just can't get it out?
Nails will float to travel further. And so what they do is they just grab one and they don't check it to make sure it's not dead, throw it in the bag that people bring it home, throw it in their tank, and they have a rotting snail. And nothing stinks worse than a dead snail.
I agree.
Maybe a dead turtle. Then it gets their tank full of ammonia and all kinds of nastiness, and it kills off your tank, makes your tank stick with it and all kinds of stuff.
Yeah, one or two dead snails will skunk up a tank pretty easy. When I buy mystery snails, I usually to get 125. And when I go through them, I go through them with my nose. I just grab them and I shake them. You can hear like they're loose inside and most likely dead. But worst of all, they smell so bad that you can just pick them out. You have 100 of them laying there on a table.
I'm just imagining you in a big old bag of snails going, yeah, that one's good.
It's cheaper than cocaine, dude.
It's like you checking your underwear to make sure you can pack a bag for the week. Yeah, that one needs some love.
Lord.
All right, so sniff your snails, don't sniff your pants. Got it.
There you go.
All right, mystery solved. No disease there, but no mollusks. In hole are very adaptive to their environments. They can handle extreme amounts of temperature ranges. They can handle mass amounts of water conditions. They're literally built to be the scavenger of your dreams or nightmares, depending on the snail. What do we want to do today is go over the good and the bad. So because we're positive people, we should start with a good list, right, Jimmy?
Like santa's List. The good list, yeah.
So the good list. We have a whole array. Let's start with your favorite mystery snails.
I love the mystery snails.
Explain to us for those that have not tried snails because they got the bad rap or they look weird, what is the design of a mystery snail?
Mystery snail? Normally, when we order them in, they usually come in about the size of a Super Bowl, a regular size Super Bowl. And that's almost like a bouncy ball, right? Bouncy ball. Right. And that's about as large as they get. I mean, they will get bigger. We've seen them. You've had some that have been twice that size, but normally they don't get real huge. They come in several different colors. They come in black, they come in blue, they come in in gold. I usually just order assorted, and it's amazing that people want one of every color. And so if you run a pet store and you want to have multiple sales, it's just like the glow fish. Everybody wants one of each color. So with snails, you want multiple sales, gets the assorted. Mystery snails, you get three or four different colors and patterns, and then that way you can sell more snails. And what I like to do is put two or three snails in a ten gallon tank. They do a great job of taking care of all the waste in the water. When I say waste, I don't mean like fish poop, but I mean all the uneaten food and stuff like that.
Now, with the mystery snail, there's essentially like three, what I like to call three types of snails shells, the shell and the mystery snail. It's not quite the full curly cue, like as in like a ramshorn design.
Correct.
Instead, it kind of spikes out to the side. It's just a nice, beautiful ring curl that spikes up to the side. And these come in, you said what colors again?
Usually they come in black, they come in blue, they'll come in gold, and they'll come in white, unfortunately.
Expensive.
Which ones?
Yeah, the white ones are very expensive.
Yeah. Usually when you get in the sordid you probably get like out of 100, you might get five white ones.
Now, the thing with these snails is they do come, as you said, normally smaller sizes, but you can get some larger. And they have painted and injected these snails, sadly.
What?
So it's not as common?
I've never heard that.
It's harder to find, but you can find injected snails, but the color never lasts. mollusks go through the color pattern quite fast. I've only dealt with it once or twice.
The other thing I really like about the mystery snails is they lay eggs above the water line. They look like a raspberry cluster, and people get really excited when they get snail eggs. They'll probably lay anywhere between 50 to 100, depending on the size of your snail, but they need to be above the water line. If they are below the waterline, let's say your eggs are above the water line and then you top off your tank and submerge those eggs. Those eggs will actually drowned. So they need to be above the water line. They develop. You can actually watch the development of the eggs on a daily basis and all of a sudden one day they'll pop out and they'll start falling into the tank and you'll have a whole bunch of little babies about the size of a bb, which I think is really cool.
And the eggs actually change color depending on the species. Most of them come out like almost like a flesh color. They're like white light pink, so it looks like just a meaty sack filled with eggs. Trust me, you see it, you'll know it's eggs. Otherwise some come bright pink. I've even seen darker eggs for some of the dark blue colors.
Yeah, they'll come with different colors and stuff, but what I normally see is just a raspberry cluster, probably again, about the size of a Super Bowl. And as you watch them, they actually expand and get bigger every day. So if it was a half inch across today, by the end of the week it might be a full inch across because they of course, grow and expand in the eggs.
Now, I haven't had luck with this, but I've also seen people take razor blades and gently scrape them off to adhere into another tank.
Yeah, I've seen that done. I've seen people who have put them on a wet sponge to keep them moist and then actually put them like in a temperature container and stuff. But I actually like leaving it in the tank above the waterline and stuff and it usually does a very good job of keeping it moist. As long as it's moist, that's all that matters.
So some of the pros of the snail is it's super hungry, it will hit any dead plant matter, extra food. In fact, we encourage that. If you have this, it's not one of those snails, you just want to like, oh. He'll scavenge. Feed this snail. This is one of those snails that you want to add some extra stuff. I have not had any luck with algae wafers, although some people have. Instead, what I like to do is crack open a can of green beans.
Green beans?
Green beans. Beans in the pet stores. When we're trying to grow them out or breed them out, that's what we do. We grab a can of green beans. We don't really have to even cut up the green beans because the green beans are already nice and soft. They'll rip them apart and they chow them down.
Yeah, I've had a lot of green beans over the years to snails and to Bristol nose plecos. I like using the French cut green beans because they're already cut lengthwise and they're already open. It's a little bit easier for the smaller snails to get at, the smaller Bristol nose to get out. But you also can put in the regular green beans. But I find that the French cut, and you'll find most people want to use that French cut green beans just a little bit easier to feed and.
Read the back of the can. Sometimes they come pre salted. You do not want those. You just want classic French cut, no salt green beans. Mystery snails I've seen, like the ones that we did in our local store over here, they get like softball size, used to get what was the crazy size that you said?
I used to get apple snails that were the size of a tennis ball. They got pretty good size, but they.
Weren'T they were just about baseball. I think that was about it. It was just a couple, though. It was like one big female that big, and it was super old. But they just packed them with green beans to get on that size. So if you want to bulk up and see how big it can get, that's the fun experiment. So the bad, right? They proliferate a ton. Those egg sacs are filled with tons of eggs, so be careful. Like, just watch your top of the waterline. They're easy to take care of. You can just pop the egg sack off and throw the egg sack away if you don't want it. But if left unchecked, you'll have hundreds in your tank.
And the other thing, too, about snails is that they're developing in the water. They absorb a huge amount of calcium. So if you have a whole bunch of snails in with baby fish, they are both competing for the calcium in the water. So you might want to add a calcium supplement, or you might want to back off on the amount of snails you have in there. If you're trying to grow up some.
Baby fish and that's like any snails, there are some snails that require it, but almost snails, we recommend adding it just because if you're growing out of a community tank, you don't want that taken out of the water.
What else you got?
So, Adam, you got any more on mystery snails?
Throw a cuttle bone in there.
Yeah, that is true. A what?
Bone cuttlebone cuttlebone. It's usually used for birds. It's actually the hard part of a cuttle fish.
I never do any of this.
Yes, and if you throw that in the water, it will add some calcium to the water, but the snails will actually eat it. And like, I've seen fish pick at it. They use it for aquatic turtles. It does quite a bit of stuff. Or you can really grind it because it's just literally pure calcium, because it dust your tank with it, because all.
Avenues to buy it. Was it's a bird supplement? Correct. I mean, don't they? Birds use it to sharpen their beaks or something. Like parakeets.
Yeah, they'll chew on it and it wears their beaks down. But then also they get calcium for egg laying with it. And you can buy a box of, like, £50 of it for, like, I don't know, wholesale was like 25, $30 at the time.
Yeah. And that'll go a long, long way.
Oh, yeah. You use that? I'd buy two boxes a year because that's all you really need. And there's always, like, little tiny chunks, so I just throw those in my tanks. That needed calcium.
Where do you even buy that? Just a pet store or yeah, pet stores carry it.
Yeah, it's called cutterbone. It's in a small box. Like, you remember those cherry apple pies used to be able to buy in a small box? It's kind of about that size of a box, and they hang on the store shelf. It's just called cuttlebone, right?
Yeah, but I bought it in bulk.
Yeah, you could buy it in a big bulk package, and there'd be, like you said, 40 or 50 of them in there.
The more you know, the more you know.
Don't buy the colored ones because they are flavored for, like, apples or strawberry. And throw those in your tank, because that'll be bad.
Screwed up.
No butcher bones, either.
No dog bones.
What if you just wanted to put it in there to look cool? Just skeleton in your tank for no apparent reason?
You do you.
Me do me?
Yeah, you do you.
Fine. Don't recommend it. A lot ammonia to your tank. All right, next snail on the list. Ramshorn snail.
I like ramshorn.
Why do you like ram?
They're a nice snail.
They're pretty.
I like ramshorn because, again, it's a very uniquely identifiable shell. This is the second type of shell type is it's perfectly spiraled into a ramshorn, and that's the name. So they're beautiful display shells, and they almost, like, present themselves because they stand perfectly upright. They don't look like cockeyed, like other snails. And these I have one probably the size of a quarter of 50 cent piece. That's about the biggest I've ever had one.
Yeah, they're very beautiful. They come in different colors. Again, they come in red, they come in blue. A lot of people like the blue. They're kind of hard to find, but they're again, they're very prolific. They lay eggs under the waterline, and it looks like a little jelly mass. I keep them in my shrimp tanks to help keep the algae down. And when I drain my shrimp tanks down 50%, I actually take a paper towel and I wipe out all the snail eggs. Just because I have so many rams wearing snails, I don't want them any more than I already have. So it looks like a little piece of snot hanging there, it looks like, with eggs in it, and I just wipe out and throw it away, but the Ramshorn is very prolific.
Also why this is a desired snail is because it's prolific, but it's very weak to take care of a snail issue. It may sound inhumane, but take your finger in there and squish them. They have the softest shell, and that can cause some issues with the long term health of a snail. If it gets bumped by a fish or knocked stuck between something, they can easily crack and die. So they're more fragile. But they need calcium more than any other snail that I've ever seen.
Yeah, and then I've done the same thing where I've had too many. I go in there and smash them and stuff, and a lot of the shrimp will go after the bodies and take out all the meat out and eat them up.
You'll see a lot of times that these colors range all over, but you'll see, a lot of the more desired ones are what they call the pink snails. They're actually red snails in a lot of situations that they're not just pink, they just don't have enough calcium in the water.
Right.
They whiten up. They're just not bringing the full on colors because you haven't put enough cuttle bone in the tank.
Cuttlebone, cuttlebone, cut.
All right, I just use the powder stuff. Man, I got to get back on.
I believe that you use the powder.
I know. You're so damn weird. I think you use a lot of powder up your nose.
I'm sorry. Little allergy issue that COVID-19.
Yeah.
I had a question I saw on some forums where people had suggested to use bait for snails. If you're trying to get rid of them, if you already have a bunch that have spawned and grown so what would be a good piece of something that would be juicy and tasty that you could put in there that they could then go in and you could pull it out?
So for this situation, I mean, ramshorn snails, I don't know. I've never had to bait them. I've never been overcrowded by Ramshorn snails because they just use so much calcium. They'll literally crack and die and suck up the calcium before they proliferate. But as far as pest snails, trumpet snails, we're going to cover that when we hit the pest because we have great trapping methods, don't we, Jimmy?
Oh, the trumpet snails are so nasty.
In due time, we'll get to trumpet snail.
Get on my high horse.
Next snail on our list are rabbit snails, and these are becoming more and more popular. They used to be quite uncommon. We're seeing them in popularity, even, like a list from Seagris and a lot of colors and big sizes. Now, have you had those before, Jimmy?
Yes, I do. I love the gold rabbit snails. They're very popular, especially when it gets about two and a half, three inches. They're just a big, beautiful snail. They're probably four times the price of a regular mystery snail, so be prepared to shell out your money for those. But rabbit snails have got many different kinds. Again, but my personal one is still the red one.
There's a bunch of different patterns that have now black and white patterns. You can get them full on size. Most snails, as you get small and you grow out like mystery snails, you can't really buy big ones. You just see the general small, basic size where you can just purchase them like a petco. These come nice and big when you get them from a wholesaler. And that's really the price behind them because they want to have that color shown. So rabbit snails are the third type of shell type. They look like a perfectly spiraled spike. They are nice and long. These things grow. I've seen them four inches. I've seen two and a half. I like to see your four inch spike there, too.
I'll show you four inches.
Oh, yeah.
What I really like about them is they're shaped kind of like a bullet, which none of the other snails really are shaped kind of in that direction other than the Malaysian trumpet snails. And I just like the way they look. I think they're really cool. The flesh on them is very colorful. Usually I've had some blue ones, I've had some red ones. And to see the mouth on the glass eating and stuff, they're very, very beautiful for the flesh color of the body of the snail.
So the benefit of these spiked snails is they love to dig. Now, normally you think they're going to dig, they're going to ruin your aquarium. Snails don't do that because they're digging slow. They're not going to collapse, rip out plants. Instead, they aerate pockets in your substrate. So if you have a sand substrate like most of my tanks, it's wonderful because you don't have to put a tongue in there every couple of months to release gases. They will do that on their own, sifting your sand for you.
They're kind of like earthworms in the soil, comparatively correct.
Well, except you don't put them on a fish hook. Yeah, you could don't do that.
They're delicious.
We don't recommend it. The pros. Right. They only get, you said, four inches. I've set to see that. I see like two, two and a half inches. Definitely need to see jimmy's four inch monsters. But they are slow breed, slow grow.
Private.
That's right. Private life stays private.
Wink, wink. They are, again, slow breed and a slow grow. So if you want a snail to last a while, you're going to get your money's worth. And in fact, some people don't even have luck breeding them.
I don't think they have a lot of babies. If I remember right, I think they have very few babies at a crack. I'm not really sure. I've never done any type of breeding with them and stuff. I've always just bought them and. Sold them.
Are these the live bearing ones?
Yes. I believe rabbis nails do do live bears as well. Yeah.
So then they probably I think they only have like a dozen off top, if I remember correctly.
Yeah. I can't remember off the top of my head, but I know it's not a lot.
The cons are if you have a java fern, good luck. It's like I don't know, how do I explain it? robs and ranch dressing. It will disappear immediately. If there's any java fern, they will hunt it out, sniff it down and mow it to a nub. Gone. Now, other plants to leave alone. But some reason java fern is delicious. Is just like cat nip to a cat. Just gone. Next snail. Unless you got something more at them.
No, I'm trying to think and I think that's good.
Should we play the thing from jeopardy right here so you can think?
Yeah, sure. Hopefully I got nothing. All right.
We tried. Didn't even get through a whole cycle of the song in time. So next one would be, I could say, the most popular. And my personal favorite. If you're looking for a beginner snail, again, it costs you some money. But the near right. Snails. Nearite snails come in a ton of different color patterns. A plethora, they have a more shallow shell. They're almost like a bubble design. Again, it's that curly, cute design, kind of like the mystery snail, but much more lower profile. And the patterns you can get on these, they come in like, how do we say, cougar mom's prints that you'd see on her pants.
They come in leopard. They come in tiger stripe. Tiger stripe, zebra strip, or whatever they want to call it.
They come with tire tracks.
They come with horns.
Horns? Yeah, little horns.
Horn.
Some of these look like the spandex from 80s hair metal bands.
Yes.
In fact, I think that's what probably inspired the design.
That's right.
Every time you think you've seen it all, you see another pattern for a neural snail.
Yeah, because they watched the mtv when they were growing up.
Clearly.
Absolutely clearly.
So the benefits of a neural snail is they don't get big. They stay a nice mild size. They are very slow compared to snails, but you can see their mouth action. It's almost like they're the rumba of the aquarium. So if you see them on the glass, you'll actually see their little round mouth, and it pulsating cleaning the glass as it goes over. It's really a fun, interactive snail for kids. But they don't breed in freshwater.
No. I think it will need to go to brackets or salt water to get them breed, don't you? Yeah.
I thought it was pure salt.
You got to do a ton of sodium to get it, eggs to even pop it all. So if you want something to guarantee never to proliferate in your freshwater aquarium, this is the snail for you.
So then what is the lifespan of these?
Have you seen them for a lifespan, Jimmy?
I've seen them up to a year and a half, but I don't know how old they are when I get them, because they have to be a certain size to sell them. Except the horn. Near rate sales come in very small.
I've probably tracked mine for over two years. I'm looking online. It shows one to two years. Someone said it's super impressive. Seven year rate. That's very hard for me to believe. Again, I still have mine after two years. I don't know. It's going to go much further.
I wonder if they would live longer if you put them in salt water. Like if we actually just shorten their lifespan a tremendous amount by putting them in fresh water.
That's a good point. That's a great point.
Is it really worth it if you're killing the animal or shortening its life expectancy?
Well, there's also a theory that mollusks age with different temperatures. The higher the temperature, it's probably going to age faster. If you do a little bit cooler in your tank, your snail is probably going to last a bit longer. I mean, they certainly grow better in hotter water.
Yeah, but then you burn them out.
That would be the idea.
That's the same thing with breeding angel fish. The warmer you keep them, more often they'll breed. But then you burn them out pretty quick.
So, again, the pros, you can't breed them in freshwater. They are massive surface cleaner. That's on objects, that's on glass, that's on leaves in the tank, filter heads, anything that they can get. There a roomba for your tank. They're extremely pretty. They have all different colors, patterns. They stay relatively nice size. They're just expensive and cons. They can't breed in fresh water.
And what's really cool about them, when you say they're arumba. If anybody has a video of their cat writing on your snail while he's cleaning your tank, send it to us, because I want to see it.
You can send it to our Discord@accordionbypodcast.com. It's on the bottom of the web page. There's a link to it. discord is our chat and we share pictures, videos. That's actually how we're recording the podcast right now, so certainly. Check it out.
I heard Adam sigh. He didn't like that joke.
Dad jokes.com.
Yeah.
But no, I think that out of this list. If you're trying to do a beginner snail, this is the snail. It doesn't proliferate. You don't have to worry about it. It's pretty. You just got to shell a little bit of money.
Yeah, they're about four times the price of a regular mystery snail.
He said shell.
Shell. Shell you. Shell you.
There we go. That's going to be our new cussing.
Shell you, shell you.
So we don't get the duck?
No duck, no ducks.
We're going to just shell it up.
Hey, did you guys hear about the snail that came knocking on the door. You didn't hear about this. So the snail came up and knocked out on the door. And this guy looks down and sees the snail, and he goes, Why is this snail here? He picks up the snail and he throws it as far as he can. And about two years later, there's another knock on the door. He looks down at the same snail sale, says, what the hell is that about? You get it?
Not at all.
It took him two years to come back. God, you guys suck.
Wow. If you producer, if you don't put cricket, I'm going to be pissed.
That is a good joke. It took two years for the shell, and then he said, what the hell is that about? Why did you throw me?
Hey, go shell yourself.
Oh, gee.
Go shell yourself. All right, moving on.
That was a good snail joke.
Next on our good snails list is the Japanese trapdoor snails. Not to be confused with other trapdoor snails that are not in the aquarius hobby, most of them are Japanese trapdoor snails, otherwise known as the Chinese mystery snail. So the pros on these, and I haven't had a lot of these, this is just a research that I've found and talked to other people with, because I've seen people with these again, huge on algae. They will munch on algae before they munch on anything else. Again, they're more of a cross between the spike style and more of the mystery snail swirl. They won't really touch plants. At least I've never heard of them. Touching plants keep them well fed. If you don't have enough algae in the tank, they'll move on to something else. So I guess that would be the only risk for hitting plants. But these are expensive. Again, they don't really breed that often, and not a whole lot that I've seen from other aquarius that are breeding them. Generally snail breeds, you can get it from a friend and buy a couple from a friend. That's why I don't see these a lot around a lot, is because I don't have friends that have luck with breeding them.
I get them from the goldfish people and they get them out of their ponds and they sell them by the 500. So I'm thinking they're pretty prolific because they get them out of their ponds. And I've ordered like a quarterback, which is usually like 125. They're not all that expensive. They supposed to throw them in your pond, and they're supposed to do a pretty good job. I've never had really good luck with them because they're kept in such cold water, but they're usually black, kind of ugly, kind of full of moss. They just look like an unkept snail, like they just don't care about themselves.
They're supposed to be extremely hearty compared to other snails, which is why you're seeing them in ponds. They get very large sizes. When I say they hit algae, they're vivacious. That's why you have to keep them so well fed. So maybe that pond life does matter. But also, these are not an asexual snail. These have male and female. So that might be some of the issues where I'm seeing my friends not be able to breed them.
They're not asexual.
They are not asexual.
That is interesting. I did not know that. They're always available through the goldfish people. There's people in Missouri and Arkansas that professionally breed goldfish by the millions, and they're always on the list, last time I checked it. Other things it was kind of interesting is they had mosquito fish, which you don't see. A lot of those things are vicious. Yeah. And I don't know. Is gambuzia the same thing as mosquito fish?
Adam yes, gamboo is the same thing.
I've got one person that lists them as Gamboosia and the other one as mosquito fish. They do a great job if you have a ditch in front of your house that's full of mosquitoes. I have brought in boxes for people who had a golf course, and they did very well until freeze up time, and then they went they're really good.
If you have, like, a small pond that you don't have any koi in or anything, well, you could put them with the coil, just snack on them.
You're right. So they become a tasty snack.
So with the trapdoor snails, again, pros massive algae destroyers. Anything in your tank that resembles algae, it'll just mow down cons. Feed it well. Do blanched vegetables like we've mentioned before, the green beans. If you have fresh vegetables, make sure to blanch them, because again, that wilts them and shows them that it's a dead, decaying plant. So they'll nob it up, but feed it well and it shouldn't touch plants.
Yeah. If you're looking for a malter, go to your pond people that you get your coin from. They're ones that are most likely to be carrying them.
And they also dig. I forgot to mention that. Are they digging other digging species?
Maybe that's when you wouldn't want them.
In a planted tank, because they just dig up your plants.
Well, I wouldn't be worried about digging up plants, but they're so large that they'll probably leave gutters in your substrate. comparative to something like the rabbit snail. Next on the list is the Black devil snail.
What's that?
What the hell is that?
Never heard of it. I'm calling bs on this. I think you're making stuff up another spike snail.
They are generally pure blacks. They have some white specks on them. And these are great as far as destroying everything in your tank, but they will munch every live plant to death.
Are they like a rabbit snail? They look similar to a rabbit snail.
They're similar to a rabbit snail as far as design, but these will definitely obliterate all your plants. Super hardy. Be careful where you put them. These will definitely do the three inches, maybe even a four. But commonly there's a two to three inch size and that's long not around. Because again, these are spike snails.
So length more than gerth.
So the good thing about these is these are another species that will not hatch in freshwater. So if you're looking for a rabbit snail like thing that had nice, pretty black spike that will dig, this is the better option if you don't want them to proliferate.
If you're worried about that at all, never see them.
We'll have to get some, well, just inspired from this episode, we'll have to get one of each, except for the pest snails, because we already have those.
Somewhere in a ditch by the millions.
The last on the good snails list. Now, there are other snails that we can't cap them all, but these are the most common that we're doing down the list. So if there's something that you want to hear about, certainly message us on the Quarrygist podcast.com, our emails on the website. We have a phone number for you to call in with your questions. We'll happily answer any follow up questions after this. And again, if we haven't had the snail, we don't know about it. We will find an expert to answer that question for you.
Or we'll just make up some shit.
No, we'll get the expert.
Okay, we'll get the expert.
So, last one. My favorite snail is the assassin snail. So as far as color goes, the assassin snail beats it. It's just that perfect spiral, black and white or black and yellow pattern. They're kind of like the nice spike cross between spike and the spiral pattern on the shell. They only get about an inch. But these are the hunters of the tank. And why I like them is because not only are they scavengers, they're not really there to clean your algae, but they will clean up debris, decaying, plant matter, and above all else, they will kill all other snails that are not assassin snails. So if you're having a snail issue.
I thought assassin snails kill each other, too.
I haven't had that big of an issue. I have what did you say, Jimmy? I'm a collection of, what, 50, 60 in my tank right now. Those are the ones we can see.
Yes. Then I've got probably a dozen over at my place that you've given me over the last little bit.
They are very slow to breed, so it took me a very long time to get that number up.
I think that maybe if there was no food available, they may become cannibalistic, but if you keep them well fed, I think they'll be just fine.
So generally you go by, what are the empty snails in your tank? So these assassin snails, they'll go out. They have kind of like an elephant trunk. I don't know the actual name. Chris biggs is going to pick on me for this one, but it looks like a tube in front of their face that is essentially their nostrils. They interact with objects and they hunt down other snails. Unless they're fat and lazy like the ones I gave you.
They are kind of fat and lazy.
So they'll hunt down any other pest snails. And what you'll see is just random snail shells all over your tank, just empty and gutted.
I had so many ramshorn snails that Rob gave me some of the assassin snails and I threw them in there and stuff, and I thought it was going to like, overnight they would kill them all, but it just took a while. And you found a little plethora of empty shells on the bottom. Now I probably have, like I said, a dozen or 18 of them. I think you probably gave me six or eight. And they're slowly breeding and stuff. And as I see them what was.
That, like six months ago?
Maybe more. It's been a long time. And so when I when I get three or four in one tank, I'll throw them over to the next tank and I have about 25, 30 shrimp tanks. I like the ramshorn snails in there to help clean up the glass. But once they become out of control, then I like to put in the assassin snails.
Do they eat the snail eggs, too?
Yes, they will.
They will also eat baby shrimp if they can catch them. Yeah, but that's very few and far between. I've only caught that in like a two gallon aquarium and there was nothing else to eat. And it just happened to be there?
Yeah, if they can catch up with me.
It was a special one.
Maybe maybe it was just a dumb shrimp.
Could be a dumb shrimp.
Dumb shrimp. You can look up this on YouTube. This is one of my favorite things. Specifically. Ramshorn snails have hemoglobin in their blood, so they actually bleed red. So it's the funnest thing that if you have a big ramshorn snail, put it in with an assassin snail and watch the hunt. It's like watching your own serial killer movie. It'll slowly catch up to it, it'll pin it down and a second trunk pops out from the assassin snail. And that is what they literally eat them alive. There's no poison. That's a misconception from people. They literally just pin them down and they eat them bite by bite. So you'll see a couple of bites and then you'll start seeing bleeding all over the tank.
Sounds like a scene from jaws or something.
It is very cool. You see blood spewing from a snail and it's great for cinema. So go on YouTube. Not safe for work to watch snails bleed on your aquarium, but give it a go. Ramshorn snails are the only ones that I know of with hemoglobin in their blood.
Well, that's information that I'll never use.
Other misconceptions with assassin snails you said that they eat each other. I haven't had that. I'm assuming any fish would eat each other given a starving issue. I've only had, like, a few shells in my tank that are empty, and I'm assuming those were old age because they were so big. I don't have a lot of issues with it. But the thing that I thought was a big misconception is when you have a big, giant mystery snail in your tank, this thing could be, what, golf ball size or closer to baseball size? No, you just assume that this giant snail in your tank, there's no way a tiny assassin snail is going to hit it, and that's the truth. One won't take it down. One won't even bother. It'll be a little annoyance. It'll ride on its back. It'll be a pest. But if you have 610 snails in your tank, they hunt in packs. They will all come together and they will all take a giant snail down.
And have the velociraptors of the snail world.
Absolutely.
There you go.
It is the coolest experiment I've ever done.
Wow, you guys are twisted.
I didn't know they would. I literally put him in there like, there's no way. And then one day I came in, he's dead and just surrounded with these things. Just wrote his back?
Yes. That's so twisted.
Give these guys a try. They're extremely hearty. The only thing I've ever seen them pick on is baby shrimp. If they're dumb and slow, they still clip scraps from the tank. They eat flake. They'll eat anything you put in the tank. They do not clean glass. They do eat decaying plant matter, and they're very slow to breed. Fun snail. All right, should we talk about pests? Now?
Don't get me started. God.
And let's save mts for last. that'll be like, our big sign off for everyone.
All right, my blood pressure just dropped.
All right, so let's go in order of the pests, shall we? This is my list. Doesn't necessarily have to be the truth. Number one bladder or mud snails.
What the hell is that?
These are tiny, little, almost opaque shells that are brown in your tank, and they're very small, tiny little snails. So if you get a plant and suddenly you see these tiny, little, weird opaque snails that don't grow very big in your tank, give it three days. You'll see these tiny little goo dots all over your tank like someone took a pin head and just dipped it in goo and tapped it all over your glass.
Ew. You know which ones I'm talking about, right, Jim?
The goo snails.
Yeah. You know which ones they look like little tiny peas, almost.
That's what these are.
Ew.
Yeah.
Normally you don't go out and buy them, but they just come in on aquatic plants. Correct.
No one sells these snails with their right mind anyway. You won't see them on a fish list. You won't see them sold in a pet store. Unless someone's like, oh, I want that for my puffer fish.
And what do they do? What do they eat?
They just everything, anything in the tank. A little bit of algae on the glass. But they really don't do a good job cleaning up. They just hit wherever they feel like there could be food where other snails, they will clean an area out. This is just lines across the tank randomly.
And what do I do to get rid of these things?
Bleach your aquarium. No, I'm joking. Assassin snails do a great job. Loaches do a great job. And supposedly shrimp are supposed to eat the eggs off the glass, but if the shrimp are already well fed, they'll probably ignore the eggs as the last resort. placos do a great job of eating snail eggs off the glass, but will not stop their breeding.
Interesting.
They are probably the second most prolific snail I've ever, ever seen. Under low food conditions, though, these guys will still breed. So if you have almost nothing in the tank, bear tank, almost no algae, they'll still procreate. Whereas other snails, like mts, only procreate based upon how much food is in the tank, you won't see a massive explosion and completely bare tank.
So, as our friend Julie from Secrets Pharmacy, they'll breed in the toilet.
I've tested that because I put them in my toilet, forgot to flush for a day, saw eggs in my toilet.
Are you sure there are eggs drop? I'm just wondering.
I mean, it could be crap residue, but they're pretty small bladder snails come on. Any plant. It's almost impossible to see because their eggs are everywhere and they'll lay on everything and they're very small eggs. You don't see like a big old goo ball like you do a ramshorn snail to get these off your plants. You can do plant dips when you get by plants, but even still with hard dips, they're coating on the goo from the eggs, protect them so well that it's almost impossible to catch these snails. So the best thing to do is have pestile eradicators like loaches placo's to eat the eggs. What else do you recommend?
I would probably just call the guy that traps rats and stuff. What's that guy called?
Exterminator.
The Exterminator. I'd call the exterminator that you're going to say ghostbuster. ghostbusters. That too. Just have him come on over and spray something in the water to kill them.
I did see on an article here it says that sometimes betas may eat smaller snails, and goldfish larger ones will hoover up snails at times.
These snails definitely are snacks for fish that don't generally eat snails because their shells are so thin and they're so small that they're crunchy delicious little bits. But unless you have something that's hunting the snail, those aren't going to like goldfish is not going to keep a snail population down. They're going to hit them every now and again.
Magically delicious. magically delicious.
So the next upgrade is the pond snail. Now, bladder snails, mud snails look exactly like a pond snail. The difference is they just get bigger. So what is your experience, Jimmy, with the pond snail?
Pond snails, I've not had a lot of luck with. I bring them in.
You bring them in?
I bring them in and sell them.
You're a monster. Yeah. Why do you do this?
Some people ask for them.
And who asked for them? In the right mind, crazy koi people. Oh, I don't want algae in my tank. Get me pond snails. Get some Japanese trapdoor snails, man. Spend the money.
A lot of times you'll get in feeder goldfish, you'll get in koi, and those snails will just be in the bag. And I've taken them and I've tossed them in a tank to see what they'll do. And they're just a nasty little snail.
They're vivacious again. It's just a big, larger variety of a snail, like the bladder snail, that just proliferates. But the difference is these will destroy plants on top of it. So they're bigger, they destroy plants, and they're just as mass producing.
Now, we talked about all these other snails and stuff, and one of my favorite snails still to this day is the apple snail, which are illegal in most places now.
And that is next on our list for pests.
Let's talk about apple snail.
All you, buddy.
Back in the day, when I first started doing wholesale, we would order these apple snails, and they would come in. They would be the size of a tennis ball, would be the smallest. They would be very, very hard shell, very, very large mouth on them. They actually would have a tough time in a tank when they would come from one side of the tank to go to the other side, and they'd hit the corner. They were so goddamn big that the mouth would barely be able to sneak over to the other side of the glass and get through. And we sold a bajillion of those things back in the day when they were legal. I always loved them. But how come they've been put on the nasty list? Is it because they eat everything?
They eat everything, and they can live in a lot of environments where other snails would die out from frost and other sources?
They don't die.
They just keep on living. We get a lot of times, like, mystery snails are just apple snails, right? They're just colorful. Well, they're similar. They're cousins. They're not quite the same snail. Apple snails are definitely the pests. They grow a lot larger. They do a lot more damage and can survive a lot more than a traditional mystery snail.
So, like, a lot of the apple snails, they used to come out of Florida, but now Florida has banned them.
Because it was they banned all the cool pets.
Yeah, they banned them. The 200 foot anacondas, apple snails, all the nasty things in life they have banned. But when Apple sales are introduced out into the everglades and whatnot, they just destroyed the habitat. And that's part of the reason that they've been banned. They're very hard to find. And you have to check your local state laws. If you could even have Apple sales.
I think they'll even live in Minnesota because they're banned in Minnesota. As far as I remember.
I've had heard rumors, nothing confirmed that they entered closed waterways, that they've actually had to bleach out, really in protecting of it, just in case. Now I think it's probably like some small pond. It was probably a lake setting with a lot of creatures, but the dnr does have the ability to do that, and we'll take that into consideration in some areas. Jimmy, what? Do you have your soapbox ready?
My blood pressure goes up 40 points when we talk about these things.
I had a peaceful argument with one of my fans and discord. This gentleman loves Malaysian trumpet snails. However, no, he is not stupid. He just knows the pros and cons of him before he got the trumpet snails and has controlled them successfully, which most aquarius do not do. Go ahead. You start all pretend to be in the camp that likes them. You just do you and get on that soapbox and tell us why we.
Shouldn'T have these things, these trumpets nails. I hate them.
I'm watching you. That little vein on your face throb right now I go on aqua bid.
And I see people are selling things by the hundred. You need one and in a week you'll have 1000. If you see 30 in your tank, you've got 3000 in your gravel. I had gotten my 125. I'd gotten some lasian trumpets nails, didn't know where they came from. Found out that where most likely they came from was some gravel that had been dried up. We used to keep gravel in a big plastic bag. We bought a bulk, probably £50 I think at the time we would buy it. I put the gravel in the tank, set the tank up, and within about two weeks I was getting ready to put some fish and I looked in there and I've got trumpets nails, not one, but hundreds of them. And they're they're tiny. And I thought, well, I'm just going to go in there and push them with my finger and start killing them. I want to put in some clown loaches. And I go in there and their shells are so very hard. And the bigger they get, the harder they are to try to control. So then my next step was I bought 150 clown loaches and put in that tank and they went through and got a lot of them, but they didn't get all of them because they would bury themselves so far in the gravel. So one of my. Friends, our friends from Wells fargo Tropical fish shops is well, if if you want to try to to get some said every night, just go in there and put a small six inch saucer on the bottom of the tank and throw a whole bunch of algae wafers on the saucer. Turn off the light, go home, come back the next day. I came back the next day, I turned on the light and my six inch saucer was 100% covered with snails a half inch deep. And I probably took out, I think, half a pound of snails because they're pretty heavy when you pull them out. This went on for two weeks. I did this every night for two weeks. I thought, well, I finally got them under control. I sold the clown loaches. I put in some angel fish, turned on the light the next morning, got thousands of them everywhere on the gravel. As soon as they turn on the light, they start going through into God didn't gravel again. And it's like kind of like watching that movie tremors. You can see the gravel moving underneath the angel fish and you're going, this is just too creepy. So finally just lost my mind. I took all my angel fish out, I put in about three, four gallons of bleach and 120 gallon tank. Just got him high, basically. I mean, they were kind of like, yeah, that was good. So then I just drained the tank, threw away all the gravel, let the tank be dry for about three to four months, put water back in them. Yeah, guess what?
And it's not just dry. Let's adequate that this is Minnesota. You probably put it outside, let it freeze.
Yeah, I put it in my garage where it gets to be pretty damn cold below zero. And yet these things are still pop up like cockroaches. They're the cockroaches of the aquarium.
So what you're saying is, just to elaborate for the audience, that there are three things in life we can guarantee malaysian trumpet snails, death in taxes and cockroaches. Cockroaches. Malaysian trumpet snails are higher on the list.
And water bears. Water bears, the little water bears tearing goods or whatever they are, basically they'll live outside in the vacuum of space. I'm pretty sure that these Malaysian tremble snails will do that too.
They came from outer space. I am positive that somebody sent them from outer space. freaking martians or bigfoot, one of the two.
So let's go over the facts of the Malaysian trumpet. Number one, they're a nice spike snail, but they're very small. They only grow an inch. They are asexual, so you don't need a male and female combo. They are live bearers, so they don't have to have eggs to get consumed or killed by something else. And they dig deep into any substrate. Some sales can only go in sand. This can dig right through your gravel. They have some real power to them. They have extremely hard shells. I don't think I've ever actually fully crushed a live one with my fingers, even. They're so hard. They breed vivaciously. It's not just one or two. They go off based upon food source. This is crucial now and knowing that mts. So when you're breeders, you do a ton of water changes, you're putting in high protein foods. There's not a lot of plants and a lot of the breeding systems that you've had. So when you flip over this plate, thousands of them, right? There's a lot of food, there's a lot of changing. But the argument on the other side of the coin is these are the apex perfect snail. They're small to aerate the soil. They go literally everywhere, gravel or not, so rocks don't get in their way. They aerate the soil better than any other snail. They are small enough to get in the tiniest, crevices and cracks of any plant to clean them off. They eat anything besides a living plant. They do not touch living plants. There's not a better snail for a cleaning monster out there because they proliferate. The big issue that I have with them, that you have with them and some of our listeners have actually put pictures on, is they're so small when they're young because they're live bearers and they have such hard shells even on a young, young age. They get in any filter that you have that is in a sponge filter and burns out the motor. I have lost filters after filter just throwing money at them, whether it's canister filter, hang on the back filter, any motorized filter, they get in and burn out consistently because the shells are so hard, they get stuck in the propellers.
And you never see one really die. It seems like they live forever. I mean, you don't find a whole lot of empty shells when you've got thousands of them and you think that they would die and they would skunk up a tank, but they don't ever peak out a tank, it seems like.
And they're so small that when they do peak out, there's not a lot there to rot, even with a full grown one inch one, which even adds more benefits to the planted aquarium. So if you want a great planted aquarium and the plants are your number one priority, and you're using nothing but sponge filters in your tank or sponge heads on your filters, even then I'll get to that in a minute. But sponge, filter, planted tanks, nothing better. And that's why people love these and why I've had conversations with plenty of expert aquarius and discord, is they have separate luck than Jimmy and I, frankly, they have just sponge filters. They do low feedings, they'll feed every four days in their tank, they're plant focused and they have a lot of scavengers. They don't proliferate like other tanks do that don't have plants or are breeders that focus on high protein diet.
I saw a really cool article a few years back, and somebody was having so much trouble trying to raise baby fish, and I can't remember if they're raising mollies or guppies, but one of their friends came over and said, you need to move your babies out of this tank because there's way too many Malaysian trumpet snails. If you see three, you've got 3000. And so he took two identical spawns that were the same day. I think it was like 40 or 45 fish, and he put 45 of them, 50 fish, whatever it was, in a bare bottom tank with no snails. They put them in the other one with the snails, and they had four times the growth in the tank that was just bare bottom because the calcium was not being used up by these Malaysian trumpet snails. And so if you're trying to raise baby fish, you're trying to raise them up quick, all the calcium is being absorbed in the water. Actually, your calcium would be depleted in the water and the fish won't grow, and they need calcium for bone development. So if that's your goal, you're trying to raise baby fish and you've got a bunch of Malaysian trumpets tails in here, you probably have better luck if you move them to a different tank.
Now, there are ways to try to control the populations if you're trying to do that. Number one is feeding. That's where this all starts. If you're putting a lot of food or an excess amount of bacteria in the tank where it has algae growth, something booming, the more food they have, the more they proliferate. If you can control what's in the tank, you can control the number. That's how it starts, but they'll still proliferate. Let's be real here. You see one, you see 100. You can do snail traps. Jimmy, you were talking about putting on a plate. Well, that's one way if you have a real problem, but they actually sell snail traps for a couple of bucks on Amazon, you can go find them. You bait the middle of them with some food and you pull them out, and you can control the numbers that way. But there's no perfect way of doing it unless you have some loach that digs down deep beneath the soil and they're still not going to hit everyone. I use a ton of assassin snails to keep them out because I want them out of my tank so I don't have to worry about the food control and even one getting stuck in my filter. People argue that you can use a sponge for the tip of your filter. Like, I have a hang on back bioweel filters and just put a sponge around the tip. Well, these things are so strong, they push through gravel that they push right through the edge of the sponge and still get in my filter. I have had the worst luck that I've seen other people just not have.
An issue with and these things too are so small when they're born that if they would get sucked or get past the sponge and they get inside once they develop inside your filter because they're like rats. Yeah they're just like rats and they will screw up your filter. They remind me so much of the what's the molas that we have here in Minnesota that is destroying zebra muscles. That's what they remind me of.
These are a bit worse but zebra muscles live in Minnesota.
Yeah zebra mussels live in Minnesota they get on your docks and whatnot and there again they destroy your beach and they're very sharp on your feet when they die. Very heavy. It's like having a whole bunch of shredded clamshells at the base of your feet when you're walking out in the water.
I wonder if these would actually live in Minnesota lakes.
There's a lot of species in Minnesota lakes that normally they just don't worry about in the aquarium trade a hard winter freeze they're dead.
I think these would live through it.
There are red swamp crayfish that we were talking with the dnr on a prior podcast that are only known in tropical climates. They only can handle heat. They have now been released into a lake in Minnesota have adapted to our winter climate so fish have a lot harder time adapting to anything. If crayfish can do it sure as hell a snail can easily adapt to different climates. So I would believe that in the future someone might screw up. Put it maybe southern Minnesota in an easier climate. Maybe it's a spring fed lake that has a little bit of warmth and that's all it takes to make one of the most invasive species possible in any lake or stream in Minnesota.
Yeah they're horrible little animals.
So if you want to make your own trap regardless of purchasing one on Amazon go get yourself a little tupperware little container with a sealed lid of plastic container from your local Walmart or Family dollar and drill some holes. Get a nice drill bit, put some holes all around it. You bait the inside of it with food, and you can literally bury that in the sand or put it, like, half above so at least the top is exposed. And just watch the snails crawl in it open up the lid. And you have all the snails in it after one night?
Yeah, and they're pretty nocturnal, so, I mean, they really move around the dark. So if you flip off your late and get up in the morning and check that trap, it'd be plum full.
That would grapple be a good medium to put in there to hold it.
Down to hold the trap down or.
Yeah just put a rock on the top of it that's all you'd really need to do.
The container isn't sealed because you're putting holes in it so the container shouldn't float by default, but absolutely. If you need something to hold it down, put a little gravel on top, sand, whatever you want to do it. You don't have to cover it, leaving a holes exposed above and then holes underneath. And the gravel both help.
Yeah. If it does float, just put it like Adam just said, just put a rock on there. Because what you're going to do is you're going to take this thing out and you're going to just smack it into the garbage and throw it away. So you eventually get rid of all your gravel that way if you continually put gravel in there.
So we've already talked about the positives, and when I talk about positives again, that vein pops in your head, Jimmy. So I apologize, but still, there's not a better snail for plants as long as you have sponge filters. If you have any other filter. Good night. The other thing you can do with these and why they sell them on aquabad by the hundreds, is for puffer fish food. Because the snail shell is so hard, harder than anything else we have in aquariums. It's perfect for puffer fish teeth. You want them to eat those hard snail objects to keep their teeth from growing. Some people say clean, but that's a misconception. They like crunchy, delicious snails. So go nuts. Feed a couple. Just know that when you put them in your tank, they will proliferate they're permanently in that tank forever, potentially.
So you're saying puffer fish have teeth like a vermin of some sorts, where they have to be gnawing on things constantly?
Yes.
Like a beaver.
Yeah. Puffer fish teeth, they need to be worn down, I think, every three months. Depends on the size of the puffer. But if you actually don't feed your puffer fish snails or something that it can chew down and wear its teeth down, you'll actually have to take it out of the water. Douse put it in a little container with some clove oil. I have no idea why clove oil or where the hell they came up with that, but you have to douse it with clove oil and then take a fingernail clip and clip the tips of their teeth because otherwise they can't close their mouth and then they starve.
Wow, good information.
What did you feed puffers in your pet store, Adam?
Anything they wanted. They would eat just about anything. I fed them a lot of frozen food, a lot of snails whenever I get a snail problem. But I try to wear that down constantly. Every now and then I'd get upset at a little crayfish that I'd get from Jim. That was like a bonus crayfish. And I throw that in there, they'd rip its arms off. But yeah, you need to keep their teeth trimmed constantly.
Savages.
So I see some people with large mobile puffers, and they feed clams. You can buy frozen clams. They're not for human consumption, and they're fully in shell and it's funeral and how watching a puffer literally crunch up and you can hear through the aquarium, a closed aquarium, hear these shells crunching in their mouth. Really fun.
That's what Rich and Joshua, don't they? They feed clams.
Absolutely. Jimmy, do you feel better than whether they got the side of your system?
I feel better, but if you come home and put a Malaysian trumpet steel in my tank, I'm going to burn your house down.
Don't do this as a prank to somebody, right. You use dildos, they're accepted you use clown puke. Do not put mts in anyone's tank. That literally is a point where you have to choose. I'm either going to go full planted with sponge filters, or I have to burn my house down.
Burn your house down.
Don't do it to a friend. That's cruel and unusual. Adam, you got anything else on the snail subject that you think we've misrepresented about? What or that we're missing?
I'm trying to think here. Oh, I was looking something up. And supposedly snails can carry different small parasites into your water if you have them outside, and they can maybe transport ick into your tank.
Well, any object that's in your tank that's in the bottom of part of your tank can transport IC. So if you had something in your substrate plants, because it always falls at the bottom because of the cycle of IC, it'll transport it because it's a wet object. You're not drying that thing out for five days before you put it into another aquarium. Absolutely. They won't be affected by IC, but they can certainly transport it around. Anything that's wet transporting from aquarium that has IC is a potential problem. Worse if it's on the bottom of the aquarium.
And remember, if you have a tank full of fish that have ick and you're going to treat it with copper, then it's most likely going to kill your snails.
Throw penny in there on the lesser mts.
Yeah.
They're actually not bothered by copper.
The Malaysian trumpet snails aren't yeah, malaysian trumpet snails aren't bothered by nuclear waste. There are so many things that don't.
Bother them, which is you drank at least a case of beer pissed in the aquarium. Still nothing.
No, they just go, oh, yeah, I.
Gave them a full dose of quick cure. Yeah, nothing and nothing. They don't even care. No, I've stayed in the water blue with quick cure.
They don't care.
They don't kill corridoris or neon tetras or anything. No, they don't. Just like, whatever.
Yeah, I put four gallons of bleach in 120 gallons. Tank didn't care.
Now, here's a question I'm sitting here thinking about. My mom has two green thumbs and probably two green feet as well. She can make dead things grow, but one of the things that was bugged her in the garden were slugs, and they're a very similar thing. And we're talking about snails. And some snails are good in fresh water or salt water. Excuse me, but most of these snails are freshwater. What would happen if you were to increase the salt content? Would they melt?
Yeah. Because with slugs, isn't that one of the treatments to keep slugs in the garden?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what my mom does. She would have a can of morton salt with her in the garden, and then she would take beer, and she would put in little saucers, and she would make slug traps with beer, and it would go in and they would die. But yeah, salt. I'm thinking salt. What if you had an aquarium you needed to reset? Could you put salt in there, take all the fish out that would die, and just salt the crap out of it and see if all those freshwater pests would die?
I don't think it would kill mts.
It might affect some other snail breeds. I add salt to every aquarium I've had, and for the list I've had, most of these snails personally, they definitely don't die for the small dosings that I use, because even if your tank is healthy, I add a little salt to it.
What if you put, like, a 40 pound bag of morton salt in?
Your talking about turn that thing into just straight up saltwater, just go for it.
That's what we got to do, Jimmy.
To probably breed in it.
Yeah, we're just trying to kill the snails, but I don't think it would kill mts.
We need to have somebody needs to try this and tell us, because I don't think it would kill him. If Bleach doesn't kill him, and Quick here doesn't kill them, copper doesn't kill him. I don't think salt would kill him, Jimmy.
That's what we got to do. We have to set up a ten gallon tank, cover it in mts, and get it going for a good while and make them breed right.
Yeah, let's do that in your basement.
Then we pack it with salt and try again.
Like, we got to do marine salt or something like that.
Put this in our trial and error basket, because we still have to use Flexeal tape to see if it fixes a leaky aquarium. We have a lot of, like, weird, oddball things to try.
Why don't we just put the Flexeal.
Leaky aquarium with the mts?
Less than one shot.
There you go.
So did you guys hear about the stale that was outdrive around town, and all of a sudden a turtle pulled up to him and mugged him, and so the police came and said to the stale, can you describe the turtle? And he goes, yeah, he was green. Can you give me a better description of that? He said, no, it happened too fast.
Oh, God. In honor of that terrible party, if you like what you hear or don't like it, and you want to tell Jimmy to not make those terrible dad jokes anymore. Go to Aquariumgyspodcast.com on the bottom of the website. You can support our show. We have a link down there for our site. Yes, thank you for the crickets there. And it's a little late, but it's there. You can donate one time or monthly. It's our replacement to patreon. It helps support the podcast. And again, we appreciate your patronage, like subscribe. And shame on you for those jokes.
Those are good, clean jokes. And I got them off the Boy scouts joke thing that they had on the Internet thing.
The Internet thing?
Yeah, the internet thing. I looked up snail jokes before I came over tonight.
That's why you were late.
That's why I was late, yeah. I was reading stuff on the Internet. It wasn't porn.
I'm taking away your phone. All right, guys.
Well, thanks for listening to Take Shelter shelter in place.
Please give some snails a try. Stay away from the pest snails. Do your homework and find what's right for you. Let's kick that outro.
Thanks, guys, for listening to this podcast. Please visit us at Aquarium guidespodcast.com and listen to us on spotify, iheartradio, itunes and anywhere you can listen to podcasts.
We're practically everywhere. We're on Google. I mean, just go to your favorite place, Pocket casts. Subscribe to make sure it gets push notifications directly to your phone. Otherwise Jim will be crying into sleep.
Can I listen to it in my tree house?
In your tree house? In your fish room. Even alone at work.
What about my man cave?
Especially your man cave.
Yeah.
Only if Adam is there.
No, no.
With feeder gubbies.
No, they're nurse you.
Imagine loving Frank. fucking motherf.
Well, I guess we'll see you next time. Later.