You can never have enough...

[popeye333]

Yes, curled red ramshorn snails for the aquarium. I need them to eat and poo and breathe to produce more ammonia as I reach the next stage in setting up the tank. The ammonia feeds one lot of bacteria who turn it into nitrite so another kind of bacteria can turn it into nitrate and so 'cycle' the ecosystem inside the glass box and keep it balanced. That is why using a lot of plants is useful because as we gardeners know they filter a lot of the stuff we either need or can't live with - and fish need that same help. The process has started in my tank, I know that from my water testing, because I have some snails that have arrived by accident on the plants (and hatched into the teeniest babies who are now grazing the glass walls) but I need more big snails to feed the bacteria who will colonise the mechanical filter as well as the other surfaces. They only live for a few hours if there is insufficient food for them, so to have a stable colony I need more poop.

You really needed to know this first thing in the morning, right? (All this stuff is why a little aquarium keeps my brain cells alive...)

Always neat to learn new things Hunni. Id have never known any of that