# how do lizards eat snails?



## Jim2109

may sound like an odd question, but im just curious. how exactly do lizards go about eating a snail? do they just eat the whole thing, shell included, or are they clever enough to get the snail out of the shell?

and if they eat the shell, do they digest it?

obviously this is going to vary a great deal between different types of lizard. im curious because ive read that water dragons eat snails in the wild and id quite like to try mine with some. but i dont know how i should go about it. whether i should just put snails in the viv, or crack their shells off first.


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## Pleco07

A lot of lizards eat snails, generally when feeding snails to lizards you offer hatchling/smaller snails as their shells are very fragile and aren't far from a roach shell in hardness.


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## Jim2109

Pleco07 said:


> A lot of lizards eat snails, generally when feeding snails to lizards you offer hatchling/smaller snails as their shells are very fragile and aren't far from a roach shell in hardness.


ok, that makes sense. GALS get so large that theres no way my water dragons could touch adults anyway. theyd have to eat smaller ones.

how big are the hatchlings?


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## Pleco07

Jim2109 said:


> ok, that makes sense. GALS get so large that theres no way my water dragons could touch adults anyway. theyd have to eat smaller ones.
> 
> how big are the hatchlings?


Achatina fulica are generally used as feeder snails as they are so prolific. Hatchling fulica are about 3mm


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## TheMetaphysicalNinja

I brought a heap of snails not long ago as feeders....

They wont actually eat them >_< 
so now I have about 90 GALS with very little to do with them. 

Gunna have to try and get them fed off again lol.


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## Jim2109

Pleco07 said:


> Achatina fulica are generally used as feeder snails as they are so prolific. Hatchling fulica are about 3mm


how big are they before the shells become too hard to eat? my water dragons wont even look at 3mm food anymore, 15mm minimum. and can they be removed from their shells and fed like that? or do they die once you remove the shell? would marginatas be more suitable, im guessing their hatchlins are much larger?

ive been reading up on them and they seem fairly prolific breeders, 1000 babies a year doesnt sound hugely unrealistic from a pair of adults, so they would supply as much food as my roach colony, and give some variation. ive just given up on locusts because they were too much effort for a small return (its cheaper to buy them lol) so im looking for something else to fill one of the spare RUB's ive got lying around. and snails seem like theyd be fairly interesting to keep with minimal smell (unlike locusts and roaches!)


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## Pleco07

Jim2109 said:


> how big are they before the shells become too hard to eat? my water dragons wont even look at 3mm food anymore, 15mm minimum. and can they be removed from their shells and fed like that? or do they die once you remove the shell? would marginatas be more suitable, im guessing their hatchlins are much larger?
> 
> ive been reading up on them and they seem fairly prolific breeders, 1000 babies a year doesnt sound hugely unrealistic from a pair of adults, so they would supply as much food as my roach colony, and give some variation. ive just given up on locusts because they were too much effort for a small return (its cheaper to buy them lol) so im looking for something else to fill one of the spare RUB's ive got lying around. and snails seem like theyd be fairly interesting to keep with minimal smell (unlike locusts and roaches!)


I used to sell fulica as feeder all the way upto 5cm shell length, for a water dragon I wouldnt go any bigger than about 2/3cm shell length.

Snails that small will probably be a bit fiddly to remove from the shell unless you just crush them and yes they will die after removed from shell.

As for margies, I would personally go for fulica as you get more eggs from them. I had 4 adult fulica (when I used to breed them for feeder) and they were producing about 1000+ eggs every 10 days with a 98% hatch rate. Plus fulica are often given away or sold pretty cheap even adults.

Locust are pretty easy to breed and sooo much cheapr than buying them. And roaches dont smell.


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## Jim2109

Pleco07 said:


> Locust are pretty easy to breed and sooo much cheapr than buying them. And roaches dont smell.


they breed easily, but the returns on hatchlings are small in my experience. with regards cost, i feed roaches primarily, and locusts maybe once a month. so i can buy 100 for about £12 delivered. or i can maintain a breeding colony at a cost of about £5/week - £12/month vs £20/month, its cheaper for me to buy. and that assumes that i actually get any babies that month and that they survive past the first couple of sheds.

and i have a few thousand Turkistan roaches that disagree about the smell! the roaches themselves dont, but their waste products do. add humidity into the mix and you get a fairly putrid stench everytime the lid comes off. if i cleaned them out more regularly theyd smell less, but im yet to find a method for seperating waste from egg cases and babies without manually removing each of the several thousand individual egg cases, and then manually sifting the waste into a seperate container whilst removing any babies from it. so for now its a job that will get done when it absolutely requires doing, and not a day sooner lol.

snails seem like a much simpler option though. as easy to maintain as roaches, with less mess! and 1000+ babies every 10 days, thats insane!! il probably have to destroy most of the eggs as id imagine my water dragons will eat a dozen a week at best lol.

any ideas where the best place to get a few adults from is? shops only seem to sell babies, and ebay has a few random adults of different sub-species, some of them albino, but no-one just selling normal fulicas.


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## Pleco07

Jim2109 said:


> they breed easily, but the returns on hatchlings are small in my experience. with regards cost, i feed roaches primarily, and locusts maybe once a month. so i can buy 100 for about £12 delivered. or i can maintain a breeding colony at a cost of about £5/week - £12/month vs £20/month, its cheaper for me to buy. and that assumes that i actually get any babies that month and that they survive past the first couple of sheds.
> 
> and i have a few thousand Turkistan roaches that disagree about the smell! the roaches themselves dont, but their waste products do. add humidity into the mix and you get a fairly putrid stench everytime the lid comes off. if i cleaned them out more regularly theyd smell less, but im yet to find a method for seperating waste from egg cases and babies without manually removing each of the several thousand individual egg cases, and then manually sifting the waste into a seperate container whilst removing any babies from it. so for now its a job that will get done when it absolutely requires doing, and not a day sooner lol.
> 
> snails seem like a much simpler option though. as easy to maintain as roaches, with less mess! and 1000+ babies every 10 days, thats insane!! il probably have to destroy most of the eggs as id imagine my water dragons will eat a dozen a week at best lol.
> 
> any ideas where the best place to get a few adults from is? shops only seem to sell babies, and ebay has a few random adults of different sub-species, some of them albino, but no-one just selling normal fulicas.


Put an add up on RFUK classifieds, theres plenty of snail keepers on here, I sold a load of adults a few months back so ive not got any, sorry.

Excess eggs/hatchlings can just be sold on or frozen and binned.

I have turks (about 3,000) and dubias (not so many) neither smell, must just be the set ups. As for locust, I started with 3 males and 3 females (adults) and within 6months had thousands of the bloody things :lol2:


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## KarlW

What setups do you have for your roaches Pleco?


And would a beardy be able to handle baby snails?



Karl


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## Pleco07

KarlW said:


> What setups do you have for your roaches Pleco?
> 
> 
> And would a beardy be able to handle baby snails?
> 
> 
> 
> Karl


Roaches;

Turks;
80 ltr tub, egg crates, food, spray it to keep humidity up and put on a heat mat.

Dubias;
Just started a new colony with smalls so in smaller tub (35ltr RUB), same as above but keep them bone dry.

I used to sell a lot of fulica to feed BD's some like them some dont. Snails upto 1-2cm would be fine for BD's IMO as their shells are still fragile.

I wouldnt use snails as a staple tho, I would use them as a treat or occasionally feed them.


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## KarlW

How do you keep them bone dry?


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## Pleco07

KarlW said:


> How do you keep them bone dry?


High ventilation, high heat


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## Ron Magpie

My plated lizard loves smallish snails. He quite happily crunches them up.


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