A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Apple (Mystery) Snails

I was wondering if anyone is growing apple snails or any other kind of snails in their aquaponics system. According to this website, they grow quickly, reproduce faster than rabbits, and are pretty tasty as well. http://www.applesnail.net/. The one problem is that they are so successful that they become invasive in many tropical regions. They make good pets as well and are sold at every pet store under the name "mystery" snail because they are so hard to identify that the pet store doesn't even know what species they are selling. They also eat pretty much any kind of vegetable. Seeing as how I'm living in New York City there is no chance that they will become invasive because they die in freezing tempertures. I am creating an aquaponics project for a graduate course that uses a 10 gallon tank and I thought they would be perfect due to their small size and I could grow some fresh escargot. : )

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Permalink Reply by Chi Ma on February 2, 2011 at 3:04pm

They are cool if you like snails I have random pond snails in my AP tank. If you want a challenge and a little side money grow some dwarf shrimp.

http://www.theshrimpfarm.com/

Check out how much some of these go for: http://hubpages.com/hub/Black-King-Kong-Shrimp

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Permalink Reply by Katie Conrad on February 3, 2011 at 5:50pm

I do like snails and I think they are tasty. :) I'm a big fan of nudibranchs because they are pretty, but sadly I don´t think there are any freshwater species. The freshwater shrimp site was pretty cool and I found a lot of freshwater shrimp being sold in Petco but I haven't been able to find edible freshwater shrimp that can grow in a 10 gallon tank or requires brackish water for development. Those Black King Kong Shrimp are cute, but I definitely wouldn't pay that much for them! :)

I would really like to get some crayfish because they remind me of lobsters and I'm doing my thesis on sustainable lobster fishing. I looked into the red claws you purchased and it costs $75 just for the box, which is out of my price range for a school project. I'm going to the New Fulton fish market tomorrow morning because I saw that they sell live crawfish and snails. Do you know any other species of crayfish that would be suitable for growing in a small aquarium tank besides the red claw?