Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Fizzy,not sure but i think lime would be the safest way to go.Just sprinkle over the area.

I remember going on a snail hunt a couple of years ago, for the local turtle-dude. I think the fish will eat them too Although, if you don't squash them first, and the fish are not hungry, the snail will just climb out of the pond/tank..
We have an abundance of snails here, I had to spread some escar-go (anti-snail stuff) around the sunflowers because I couldn't keep up removing them by hand! They're just brown and yellow garden snails, though I can get lots of those really big naked snails near here as well.

About the snail shells; would adding ground-down eggshells have the same effect? Don't actually have fish in my system yet, but I'm thinking about maybe making fish pellets (as a diet supplement for the fish).

garlic i think also works in humans.

Paella ... with snails ... mmmmmm

http://spanishfood.about.com/od/maincou ... encian.htm

If you don't spray any chemicals around and don't have baits lying around ... then maybe it is OK to eat your snails?

I had a bology teacher tell me that I shouldn't eat eggs from backyard chickens in Western Australia, cos all the land was sprayed for termites as homes were built..

Well they probably scratched around a lot and ingested a little ... but I used to feed them, chicken pellets, wheat, dried sweet corn ... as basic staple.

Then food leftovers, bread, potato, fruit, waste lettuce leaves from the local supermarket, greens from edges of virgin bushland, feral plants such as nastutium , grass clippings ... (no pest spray ...)

I guess that given enough food from various wide ranging sources will "dilute" the problem of toxicity to such a degree that the impact will be minimal. Very difficult to be "chemical free".

Big business adds goodness knows what to our food. Preservatives, colouring agents, waxes .. so foodsccraps from last evenings roast dinner are probably a no go?


So it seems variety could be the spice of life whether eating snails, chickens or feeding snails to fish.

Free range chickens probably eat all sorts of toxins. (Natural, and synthetic (Whatever has been put into the ground previously)

But they do taste good... and gimme a free range egg or bird to roast anytime. (However .. how toxic is it... really?)

How "organic" is an organic chicken in this day and age?

How "safe" is a backyard chook or aquaponic fish?

If you catch wild flies and maggots, was the meat or whereever else they feasted on chemical free?

If you feed them composting worms from your own worm farm, was the shredded newspaper or grass clippings or food scraps chemical free? If you use cow manure, do you know what sprays were put on the pasture?

Hmmm ..

I love escargot, fried in butter with a little garlic.

Hey all.

I just purchased a couple of cheap snail traps on ebay - will see how they go and report back.

Only thing is they use beer to attract then drown the poor little buggers - so not sure if I will be able to purge them.

I read somewhere else of people using yeast and water mixed to attract them - wonder if that wll kill them also?

There are a lot of snails in the area I am in - when it rains (which is not very often!) they are all over the garden walls.

I like the idea of a trap - cos im lazy!

Any thoughts on this?

Here is the ebay item - Just a few dollars each!

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll ... %26fvi%3D1

Here are some plans to make a trap from a soft drink bottle:

http://www.burkesbackyard.com.au/factsh ... native/487

Hi all - found this interesting research on Nutritive potentials and utilization of garden snail (Limicolaria aurora) meat meal in the diet of Clarias gariepinus fingerlings

http://www.academicjournals.org/AJB/PDF ... t%20al.pdf

I wonder how this compares to our Australian garden snails and silver/jade perch?

Snails and slugs are great natural food,,,BUT,the problem is whether or not they had recently eaten "snail pellets" from a neighbours garden.
To minimise this problem Heinekin or XXXX beer is used in the trap, snails quickly loose their stomach contents due to the horrible taste
Crush the snails a little to help the fish ,the shells will also add calcium to the system.

Or any WA beer

I have also found a way to make a simple roach trap - get a tall glas jar. Put some coffee grounds in the bottom with a little water. Prop in a corner of the wall so the top of the jar is touching on 2 sides like this:

I hate roaches - so feeding them to the fish will be a pleasure.

It is a good idea to grow some wormwood around the chook pen and break off a few pieces every so often, lay it at the base of their henhouse, (preferably concrete) so that the chooks will walk on it. The wormwood helps to keep away the stick fast fleas which drop to the ground to lay their eggs in the sand. The concrete base does not allow this to happen.

Perhaps silver perch woud eat these?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtM0Y3YihAU

Great... now all I have to do is find a source for Giant Silver Perch.... and somehow smuggle a batch of Giant African Snails through customs....

Went out lastnight between showers (we are actually getting some rain for once!) and took my torch for a bit of snail hunting. Found about 20 of them within 5 minutes! Big fat juicy ones. I put them back in the garden to keep breeding - atleast I know they are there when my fish get big enough I will harvest them for their dinner

Introducing snail material into a system would not be something I would do out of sheer caution given their potential vector status for some very dangerous mammalian parasites.
While here is me running ducks that eat and poo snail, there are some different processes involved here although I will not yet call what I run safe.
I would exercise caution about obtaining snails that have potentially been exposed to waste from other mammals, it would concern me if someone close has a dog, or you have fruitbats visiting and finally poo/entrails from other creatures, ie sheep manure,flocks of birds, or blood/bone garden products etc

While this may work for you and your geography, I expect in some areas of the world this would introduce a high parasite threat

Although hopefully you have already thought of and researched what I have mentioned

All good points that I have not thought of. I wonder if freezing them or boiling them first would kill any parasites? I watched this and figured if they are ok for humans then they muct be ok for fish? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaOZpKtwBpM