The aquarium in my classroom is infested with snails. At least, I think they’re snails. They’re really tiny things that look sort of like barnacles. But they do have a hard shell, and one of my students said she saw one of them scraping the aquarium glass with its mouth.
The water is cloudy because I’m battling algae right now.
There are some chemicals that do stuff to snails, but those chemicals do stuff to fish and live plants too. I would just crush them as I see them, but the gravel is filled with them. There must be thousands in my tank right now.
So what’s the nature-friendly solution to snails? Loaches! Loaches love to eat snails. I went to my favorite aquarium store last week, but they didn’t have any. This weekend they did! I even got to choose between zebra loaches and yo-you loaches. I went with the yo-yos. They have a larger, more eye-catching pattern.
They are small right now.
I got five of them. One has a deformed head. Instead of a pointy snout, it has kind of a rounded head. I think it kind of looks like a dolphin.
This kids will be able to name this one because it’s easy to spot.
When you said ‘loaches’, I thought for sure that you were making up words.
How interesting that you will have this little stop on the food chain happening right in your classroom. Do you have any student interesting in keeping track of the numbers for us? ‘Snails eaten per day’-kind of stuff?