Please help, I’m a complete newb!

[u/NiwaLeaf]

Hi everyone, I’m completely new to keeping an aquarium. I have one mystery snail named Pokey lol my mom found her old shallow murky tank by the side of the road with the garbage and she was inside. (I think she) I told my mom to bring her to me lol so now I have gone and got her a 5 gallon starter kit tank, I have crab cuisine and bug bites. I’ve been reading and watching videos but still feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. What you see in the video is the new tank setup, there’s a couple live plants in there, I got some sand and did sand on one side and her old gravel from her old tank on the other. I didn’t rinse the rocks and used some of her old water in this tank. I see people do a rotating diet but I don’t know how often to feed each thing and when? Anything else I should know to help (her?) thrive?

[u/bear6854]

My mystery snails love the hikari algae wafers. They’re cheap on Amazon too. I like to put one in every other day.

[u/DianeMarieArt → u/bear6854]

I have a question on that-- hikari algae wafers have copper in them and I heard that that is toxic to snails, but someone said that it matters what kind of copper... Not all is toxic (?).

So how long have you fed hikari wafers and did your snails live at least a year ( their expected lifespan as per Google search).

[u/bear6854 → u/DianeMarieArt]

The amount of copper is so low that it doesn’t affect them. I’ve never heard of them fatally affecting snails or shrimp.

Actually, it’s found in very small amounts in a lot of shrimp/snail advertised food now that I research it. Unless it’s straight up copper in the water column it won’t hurt them. I’ve read that they need a little copper for their blood function like how we need iron.

They haven’t shown any signs of illness or instantaneous death. I’ve been using the wafer for about 2 months.

[u/DianeMarieArt → u/bear6854]

Oh good! Because I was wondering just how Hikari can put this ingredient in all their wafers, the only thing I could think of at the time was maybe where it's made, pet snails aren't popular, so they make them for other algae eaters. But now I see that Hikari is really popular here and it's all my local PetCo has on their shelves, I would think if it were killing people's snails, they wouldn't be so widely sold.

Thanks for the feedback. It does seem maybe a tiny bit is ok. Or perhaps what chemical compound ( what type) of copper it comes in as an ingredient.

I only know this because I read it somewhere online and bc of my personal experience using that blue stuff for ick for my platys years ago, even though I didn't dose the whole tank, the medicine must have gotten a little in the tank after I put the treated fish back in the main tank with my 4 mystery snails... The medicine said not to be treated with invertebrates, and it's because of the copper in it. So just the little bit on the fish killed my snails.

But that's good to know maybe it's not so toxic when it's the copper sulfate in the wafers

[u/bear6854 → u/DianeMarieArt]

I think that’s because medication is applied directly into the water column and in a higher concentrate. No prob!