Literally.
So I went out in the late summer and got about 1 gallon of wild, invasive aquatic snails for this Snail Water.
I happily raised them and they were doing ok. I tossed in some older greens, they’d eat, all was well.
Then I put in The Gourd.
I figured they’d all be fine, they had this gourd to eat, they seemed to like it, and there we are.
Well, the gourd molded, and the filter clogged with red weird algae mold and …the tank just didn’t recover.
So I’ve had a tank of mostly dead snails in the basement for…well, lets not discuss the exact chronology, but I’ll just say that my husband is the most patient of men. That tank smells bad. Like bog of eternal stench bad. So I did what anyone would do — ignored it totally until I coudn’t any more.
I didn’t want to admit defeat. I didn’t want to admit that — even though I successfully managed to breed mosquitoes in our house all the way through December — I had not managed to keep a gallon of snails alive, even after they had babies.
I am not good at this.
So, today, January 17, 2018, I bleached the tank after investigating it and acknowledging that there might be three living snails and there were absolutely certainly over a hundred very, very dead snails in various states of…um…gelatinousness.
Because they are invasive, I have to bleach everything that the water touches and the tank itself. It smells like a nightmare. I had to use my hand to get something I dropped. My hand smells like a nightmare. I’ve washed it. Twice.
I’m going to take a shower and see if I can rid myself of this putridness.
It’s probably the most medieval part of the experiment, actually, this smell.
Here’s a terribly miserable video for you about how I’m gunna have to start over this experiment….again.
Yours in failure,
Aneleda
The Gross Things Laurel
Check out the album including a pathetic video here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/PR4JMS370EIc102S2