The snail’s bright pink foot licked at the bright green leaves of a cryptocorne; its shell gleamed bronze in the strong aquarium light. Another glided across the front of the aquarium, its tiny mouth pulsing at the glass. From outside, I gazed at them with admiration. 

It had not been my intent, when I set up the aquarium a few months earlier, to have snails. Prone to eating fishes’ eggs, suspected of eating plants, and prolific to an extreme, snails are often reviled by serious fishkeepers, at least the ones who frequent sites such as r/Aquariums and the Aquarium Co-op forums. 

They are also difficult to prevent, since their eggs can easily hide in the fronds of aquatic moss or on the gnarled rhizomes of a Java fern. Some contributors recommend dipping plants in a mild bleach solution before adding them to the aquarium to prevent such hitchhikers. 

However, distrustful of this advice, I did not see any real way to prevent the introduction of snails. So, I picked over my plants the best I could, and I hoped for luck with my natural approach to family planning. 

And, of course, the snails appeared. A tiny pair of crusty white spirals (probably Melanoides tuberculata) nestled in the black sand. A small round brown one (perhaps some variety of the Planorbidae family, commonly known as ramshorn snails) crawled up the back wall. 

At first, I dutifully reached into the aquarium and picked them out. However, once introduced, pest snails are nearly impossible to get rid of, since many species are hermaphroditic and therefore only require a single overlooked specimen to repopulate a tank. 

As summer drew to a close, I got busy with work and neglected my aquarium for a couple weeks. The snails took full advantage of this opportunity. When I returned, snails lurked in every corner. On my plants sat little brown snails, nibbling at their succulent leaves. 

Tiny white snails like grains of rice burrowed in the sand; their parents, about an inch long by now, crawled along my driftwood. 

At first, I was annoyed. For the first couple months of my aquarium’s existence, I’d labored like Psyche to keep these creatures to a minimum. 

And yet, now that they’d made their home in my glass box, one couldn’t avoid seeing that they were beautiful. 

I let them stay. I felt a little silly doing so, especially since I’d come to accept my little mollusks on such a superficial basis. 

Over the summer, at a social gathering, a girl had brought up a popular Internet quote, which she attributed (incorrectly) to Friedrich Nietzsche. “If you crush a cockroach, you’re a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you’re a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria.”

“I just think it’s very true,” she said. 

And then, a few minutes later when the topic had changed to her decision to give up veganism, she told us fish was the first meat she began eating again because “fish are ugly.”

At the time, I was peeved with her. First, for the libelous accusation that fish are ugly. Fish are not ugly. Mine—celestial pearl danios, speckled like tiny trout, and three-lined corydoras catfish—are a whole Gerard Manley Hopkins poem. Second, for implying that ugliness was a good moral justification for eating or not eating something.

(Full disclosure: I do eat meat, including fish.)

Nevertheless, a couple months later, I found myself doing something similar with the snails. Would I have let them stay if I had not discovered they were pretty? Or would I have gone forth, armed with slices of organic cucumber, in an effort to cull their numbers? 

Not that I think it’s always wrong to kill snails. Most aquarium inhabitants will readily eat whatever tankmate fits in their mouth, without any moral qualm, and I don’t imagine the snails are any exception. (Being tiny and slow, they are mostly limited to various eggs.)

And admittedly, aesthetic appeal is one of the main criteria for admitting an inhabitant to one’s aquarium. (Even if I had a large enough tank, I would not, for instance, buy a plecostomus.) I just don’t like having this fact brought in front of me as a potential reflection of my ethical commitments. 

Anyway, enough philosophical considerations from a fake Nietzsche quote. 

I like my snails. If you have a fish tank and are not planning on breeding your fish, they are delightful inhabitants. They do not eat my plants as much as the Internet had me believe, and with their soft, fluttering feet, they have crept into my favor—and into every crevice of the aquarium.

Grace Buller

After graduating from Calvin in May 2025 with a degree in writing and Spanish, G. E. Buller decided to stay in Grand Rapids. Currently, she is working as a special education aide. Her non-writing hobbies include fussing over her aquarium and reading about medieval/early modern nuns.