Where do you get those shells?

[Trigun]

I've been thinking of starting one of my ten gallons back up and I've bounced around from salt water to livebears to shell dwellers now. So I have a question Where do you get those Beautiful shells and do you have to have a certin kind?
I know you can use PVC but, I like the more natural look.

[LittleMousling]

You can use a number of different kinds of shells.

First, actual Neothauma shells of the type the shellies would live in in Lake Tang. However, these are difficult to get in large numbers and often quite expensive; Aquabid's the best bet for acquiring them.

Turbo shells, which are the shells of marine inverts, are available at pet stores, usually meant for hermit crabs. These can be pretty but rarely match, are too heavy for the shellies to move, and again are difficult to buy in large numbers.

Craft stores often carry shells of assorted types - turbos with odd coatings, oddly-shaped shells, and so on. The only thing to watch for with craft stores shells is to choose based on the fish. Round shells with round openings, as light as possible, and about one to two inches in diameter are the best. Craft store shells can vary from surprisingly cheap to somewhat overpriced and deserve a good lookabout.

Escargot shells are cheap, light, the correct shape and size, and fairly natural-looking. But they can be difficult to find outside of fairly populous areas. Gourmet stores, upscale groceries, and French restaurants are the safest bet. Escargot shells do come in different sizes but the most often available size, Extra-Large, is just about perfect.
Sometimes the shells are packaged with canned escargot but I know a lovely recipe if you have extra!

Non-shell options:
PVC elbows, as you mentioned, are common for breeding and rearing tanks. Generally there's a cap on one end although that's optional. They're easy to care for, cheap, and it's extremely easy to remove the shellies from them, but of course they're not at all natural and one misses out on nearly all of the natural behaviors of the fish.

Small terracotta pots with holes cut in the side are also a possibility, but this completely erases the natural behaviors. This essentially creates cave-dwelling fish, when most of the fun of keeping shelldwellers is the shelldwelling part! It's a possibility, but has few if any pros and a lot of cons: fewer pots will fit than shells, the fish can't spawn in the traditional way, they're far from natural, they easily accumulate algae because of their porosity, and so on.

Escargot shells (note the round opening):

[Trigun]

Thanks I'm going to try to find some hermit crab shells at my lfs. The Escargot shells are out because there arn't any French places in town or in the area for that matter. The pots idea is not bad but, it sounds like it takes all the fun out of it.

[LittleMousling]

A regular gourmet store or lots of groceries will also carry them - it's worth looking through the yellow pages to make sure there aren't any. I had no idea there were a bunch of gourmet stores around me until I looked in there, and the first one I called had lots of escargot shells.

[Clint]

I got some of my shelldwellers shells from,,, gulp,  dollar tree... LOL

You can buy a little basket of them for "one single dollah" and theres usually about 3 that that you can use in every basket.

The rest I got on a beach trip this past summer.

[Mattf]

I have a few of the pots in my tank (small ones, one has just the drainage hole in the bottom, the other has another hole by the lip that I put in) and the fish don't like them much. One of the females (multies, of course) used to go into it, but no, no fish expresses interest.

I really just use whatever shells I can get my hands on. I have quite a few conch shells in there, and they really do like them. The male's favorite shell is a sizeable conch (sizable = 4" long).

If you're in the states, www.seashellcitymi.com looks to be pretty good and reasonably priced, although I've never ordered through them.

Another thing you might want to do is walk into the lfs, look through all their tanks, and see if they have any dead snail shells, from apple snails. I did this when we went to Chicago, and the guy gave me 3 HUGE apple snail shells, one of in which my N. pulchers spawned.

When you called this French gourmet store.... is the store like a little shop where you can buy foreign wines and breads and cheeses and... .snails? Then you just asked if they had any empty shells?

[LittleMousling]

It's not a French Gourmet store, just a normal one, but it stocked unusual kitchen tools (pastry knives, etc), exotic pastas, very cool desserts, and so on. They had a box of 36 shells the first time I went, but since then they've mostly carried tubes of shells with a can of snails at the bottom. The snails are never sold inside the shell unless you're buying them half-made from a grocery. The great thing is, you don't have to cook them in the shells, you can use an escargot dish or even adjust the recipe to cook them all in a bowl. But, anyway, the shells are sold empty, often without snails included but sometimes with attached cans.

[Trigun]

Nope looked in the yellow pages not Gourmet store in the area but, there is a French Cafe place I might try and also theirs a wineiry/Restaurant place of some sort thats out of town a ways but, it sounds like my best bet to find escargot shells.

Might try the dollar store(s) too theres one of them on every conner almost round here.

Looked at my lfs no apple snail shells that would be big enough so thats out.

I think I might also try this Korean grocery store by my house and see if they have anything.

[Taffy]

I would strongly recommend escargot shells if you can't get neothauma, and avoid sea shells like the plague otherwise you'll end up with tanks that look like Clint's !  EEEEeeeeeewWWWWeeee!   LOL!  ;-)

[Clint]

avoid sea shells like the plague otherwise you'll end up with tanks that look like Clint's !  EEEEeeeeeewWWWWeeee!  LOL!  ;-)

Hey! I resemble that remark.

I do need serious help for "style".

I really never even considered plants in a tangy tank, I thought the high pH and alkalinity would not be good growing conditions. Cept for duckweed. I will try it though.


BTW is there an online source (or any source) for neothauma shells?

[LittleMousling]

They're sold on Aquabid a bit, and by most of the Tang sellers, but BOY are they pricey, at least last time I checked. Sigh ... oh, well, some day. Nah, I had one that was shipped in with some fish but no one wanted to live in it and then they buried it who knows where.

[Taffy]

I can see why someone would think the money was worthwhile if they were after biotope accuracy big time.  Everyone draws the line in the sand in a slightly different place depending on their own priorities and constraints.  As you say, given the choice, shellies will often pick other shells like escargot over neothauma anyway and we all know they'll spawn in a conch shell or small flowerpot if that's what's available - so it's not high on the fish's list of priorities.  Most view shells as small caves, nothing more to it than that really.

[ss45863]

Just to let you guys know if you havent know already. I found this site that sells  Neothauma shells. They are $2 each. I bought 8 for $16 and $4 shipping, total $20. Im not sure if that is expensive but here is where you could get them if you are interested. Here is the link.

http://www.exotic-cichlids.com/Stock%20list.htm

Just scroll down.

[Freya]

After you get the shells what do you do with them to prepare them to go into the tank? Boil them? Bake them? Soak them in salty water?

[LittleMousling]

Most shells should need no preparation - ones that have actually been used for escargot at are all oily should be soaked for a week or so, and change the water daily.