Full story on the hitchhiker

I needed to know how this could have happened!

Where could this have come from!

I went to text Shane.

When Lily yells,

“Ask chatgpt!”

I got in the app and typed.

“Omg, we found a snail in our aquarium tank. How could this have happened?”

The response was.

“The most common cause is, it hitchhiked on a plant you bought.

Which we did.

I couldn't believe this.

Next question.

“What do we do next?”

Response gave us two options.

Option 1: Keep it, But they can also reproduce on their own.

Option 2: Take it out.

Now we had to decide.

Keep it.

Or evicted it. 

We watched it for a minute. 

But.. We didn't want to waste too much time. 

We knew we had to decide before we got lucas.

If Lucas sees this snail, no way he would let it go anywhere.

I started to think.

“He’s kinda cute.”

Lily responds immediately.

“Ew! No! Get rid of it!”

And with the thought there could be more hiding in the tank.

We decided to evict him.

He was too tiny to use the net, so I got a plastic spoon.

I used the spoon to scrape him off the glass.

It was not as easy as I thought it would.

The spoon pushed him up the glass.

I looked at the spoon 

He wasn't there.

I look into the tank.

Couldn’t see him.

I lost it.

Then Lily yells.

“He’s right there.”

I looked, 

He was crawling back down the glass.

I tried again,

The scoop got him off the tank.

I then tried scooping him out of the water.

I didn’t catch him in time.

He curled into a ball.

Slowly sunk to the bottom,

Hit the wood.

Rolled off.

And landed in the gravel.

No way I was not putting my arm that far in the tank. 

I thought for a minute.

“What am I going to do now?”

I decided the net was the only option.

I took the net,

Scooped him out with some gravel.

I looked on the net. He definitely was in there.

Now.

“What do we do with him?” I thought.

We didn't think about that before we scooped him out.

I thought for another minute.

I decided 

 I will dump him behind my fence that has leaves and vines 

“Thats a perfect place.” I thought 

So we took the neat and dumped him out over the fence.

Few that was over.

But afterwards, I continued talking to chatgpt.

Was.. 

Next time not doing that, 

That's when I learned.

Apparently, releasing aquarium animals into the wild can interrupt the native ecosystem if they're not native to the area.

Oops i thought,

“I hope to not find a family of snails in my back yard.”

And then..

3 days later.

I found another one.

Crawling up the same side of the glass.

But what happened next was shocking. 

Little blue went to investigate.

Then white fish investigated.

Pink Fish nibbled but left him alone.

I told them, with a giggle.

“You guys, that's not food!”

But then,

Yellow Fish eyes him.

He must have thought.

“YAY!! FOOD!”

He zoomed over to the snail.

Ripped the snail off the glass.

With the snail in his mouth, he zoomed across the tank.

Hid in the corner and tossed it back and forth out of his mouth.

I was freaking out thinking,

“Hes going to choke on it!”
I banged on the glass to attempt to scare him and hoped he would drop it!”

Instead,

He put the whole snail in his mouth.

I watched him closely while panicking.

He never spit the snail back out.

I went to chatgpt right away.

And typed,

“Will my tetra choke on a snail?”

What I learned was.

“Some newly hatched snails are okay for tetra to chew and swallow.”

I watched him for a bit.

He was acting normal.

So..

After a few minutes

I thought,

“I guess snails are just a few snacks for the tetra to eat.”

“Well.. The fish got this under control.”