Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

These little underwater snails are breeding up in one of Joel's blue barrels. Potential fish food?

absolutely, and also good for controlling algae. Physastra (or Physa) sp.

when you pick up the snail with the point of the shell to the top, is the opening on the left or right side?

and also good at blocking pipes.

have you/ eb tried feeding some to the silvers?

Is that some sort of Northern/Southern hemisphere thing?
Joel get out your snail handling gloves!

no, it's a species identification thing, whether the shell is sinistrally (left) or dextrally (right) coiled

Damn, to dark now, I'll have to go out in the morning and have a look...

good goldfish food

b2 are the shells soft like common snails or hard like sea snails?

cheers

i think i have seen the snails you are talking about. at my local pet smart, i have a good friend whom is the fish expert there, and they have A-sexuail snails reproduceing at an great rate. the only tanks where there not at are the Gold fish(different system then the outheres) and the Ciclids(becuase they eat all of the snails, so none left in the tank).

they look like a GREAT system add, they get rid of the alge and feed the fish. a +/+ .i think when i add fish i might just ask her to stick some of those snail in there with them, and maybe some green slime wile she add it, gosh i love the wheird stuff you ask for when shopping for AP.

the opening is on the left when your holding the tip, and they are very fragile if you try and squeeze the shell...

thanks EB, they are Physastra sp. probably introduced to Australia.

They are quite amazing, no idea where they came from.. Recently I turned off my barrel system and some of the gravel growbeds filled with rain water, then snails started to pop up in the flooded bed, they seem to breed very quickly....

they are in my top-up water drums and in the duck weed baths

That makes sense.
I know where I see them, they go there by there aquatic plaints dealer, the eggs just hitched a ride, and BOW, they had small little snails.

There cool, I am definitely going to add these to my system.

-df