when it comes to snails you know me I am on team "kill it with fire" because I mean I don't think
they're creepy looking I just don't like the population boom aspect but at least half of
you out there think they're God's gift to mankind so I was at Petco I saw they had a
bazillion mystery snails and I decided to take one home so here's my honest review
let's go with the pros first appearance wise they're fine they come in lots of different colors
like magenta golden yellow even kind of a bluish Ivory colored they only get about two inches in
diameter at Max and so yeah that's good for me because I could mostly keep Nano tanks and then
when they're really happy their antennae are out and they're really long and kind of cool looking
so yeah nothing against their appearance breeding wise I really like that they're not hermaphrodites
where they can just reproduce on their own so you have to have at least one of each sex
in order to have breeding occur and if you only have one snail they're not gonna make little eggs
everywhere like nerite snails do so that's one thing that really annoys me about them mystery
snails don't do that I heard they're really easy to breed I haven't done it personally but
apparently you can just kind of lower the water line the female will crawl up there lay an egg
cluster and there's plenty of videos out there on how to take care of it activity level these
are one of the fastest moving snails that I've seen at least commonly available in the aquarium
hobby they don't burrow in the substrate and hide all the time you'll see them front and center so
I really like how basically the energy level is pretty high for a snail they're kind of exciting
they're also really interesting to look at I think one of the coolest things they do is they climb
up all the way to the top of the tank and then they'll just let go and kind of parachute all
the way to the ground they don't seem to care and then yes if they do fall upside down they
know how to write themselves so you don't have to go in there and help them out they totally know
how to take care of it but it's kind of cool to just see a falling snail every once in a while in
your aquarium another weird thing that I didn't know mystery snails do is they have this weird
breathing siphon that comes out the side of their head so if you see what looks like a strange organ
coming out that is perfectly normal they're using it to inhale in water pass it over their gills and
then they exhale it out the other side and this is used because they can go out of water for a period
of time as long as their gills are moist to lay their eggs usually but it does mean you may need
a tight fitting lid to make sure they don't escape on the ranking of fish and creatures that escape
I don't think they're as bad as let's say in a mono shrimp a mono shrimp seem to try to find
every single crack possible to escape for some reason the mystery snails at least for me they
tend to stay underwater now what about usefulness a lot of people get snails because they're really
great scavengers a good cleanup crew member and I think mystery snails personally for me are
pretty voracious they will go after any kind of random food crumbs or my favorite is they
will eat all the melted leaves that come on your crypts when you first plant them which is really
cool because at least for me I find it hard to get off the stringy slimy bits of Crypt melt
but then I put my mystery snail in the tank and she just ate everything which was awesome
the last reason why I really like mystery snails is because of their heartiness I don't
know about you but I've actually had a little bit of trouble keeping nerite snails in my aquariums
and I think it's because once all the algae is gone they end up starving even if I feed them
snail specific food it seems like the fish in the tank always eat it up first before the very very
slow narrate snail eventually gets to it versus mystery snails I've totally seen mine just bowl
over other fish to get to that Repashy gel food and they will just push everybody out of the way
and get their fill of the meal so I really like how hearty they are as for cons I do think they
prefer to eat fish food over algae so for me personally they are not the best algae eaters
I don't know what do you guys think Sheila from Life With Pets did kind of a competition between
the two the nerite snails and mystery snails and the nerite snails definitely won. Versus
Jason from Prime Time Aquatics says they're about the same tell me in the comments what you think
another thing to know is if you have softer water like I do you will definitely start to see pitting
or kind of dense divots in their shells and that's because they don't have enough minerals to create
a healthy shell so add some minerals in the water such as using Wonder Shell or Seachem
Equilibrium and then feed them some crustacean specific food like shrimp food or Hikari Crab
Cuisine all of those contain like calcium and some more minerals that you need to ingest in
order to create those healthy shells another thing that kind of annoys me about them is I
can't really tell when they're sleeping versus when they're dead like to me they seem to sleep
in really weird positions where like the shell might be even slightly tilted and not on the
ground and the body is just kind of I'm like are you alive are you dead I don't have to stick my
hand in the tank every single time but if this does happen to your snail and you're not sure
if they're dead or not uh usually the trapdoor is open although again my snails I've seen them
do this even when they're asleep or resting uh and then they'll smell really bad so just be
aware that's something I don't know you tell me if you know a secret to knowing when snails are
alive versus dead are mystery snails worth it ah you know for me I would say they're great
scavengers okay algae eaters but I mostly get them for the entertainment value so for example
my daughter ended up getting another mystery snail for her kids tank and I think if you have a family
and you're wanting to get them more involved in aquarium keeping a mystery snail might be
something that would capture their interest more however if snails are really creepy to you and
you're just not into them there are actually other many other beautiful invertebrates that you could
consider I personally like red cherry shrimp and I have a whole playlist over here on how to take
care of them so check it out take time to enjoy your aquariums and I'll see in the next video