Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I got these snails that eat all my landscape foilage, well if i throw them in my pond my tilapia go crazy for them. I end up taking out a empty shell..

The only negative side is if the shell cracks the sharp edges can hurt the fish's mouth. I only seen one broken up shell so far though of the 10 that i put in there.

Its just fun giving those pesky snails some pay back...

I doubt the broken snail shell would hurt the fish, but it may block the pump and pipe work

Last night i threw like 10 snails in my pond, today I have a dead fish, not only that but my fish(tilapia)wasnt to enthusiastic about eating during feeding today...

Only other thing I did was add a little bit of lime to my pond...

I really hope my fish is ok



I have like 35-40 fish, I feed with pellets, I might be over feeding. Do I just do one handful of pellets? Yesterday I might of got carried away

What kind of lime and how much burt?



They say feed to 1% of fish weight but this is not easy to determine and not super important for a backyard set up. I just feed till they stop. Your fish will tell you when they are full. It is a good idea to use a measuring cup so you have an idea thou.

And why ?

Fish seem normal again

Ive been occassionaly adding hydrated lime, after a year my ph slowly went down to 5.5 im bringing it back up slowly, im about 6.5 now..

My top off rain water also has a more acidic ph

Try escargot. Our snails are petit gris imports from france and non-indiginous. Keep em in an enclosure and feed em nice tasty stuff for a week and .... tasty. Unless you use a whole bunch of poison in your garden. I also notice that once you have eaten a bunch, the rest seem to sense it and split.