Red food for Tiger snails?

[etana]

A Finnish snail seller said on their website that Tiger snails' shells will look more bright orange if they're eating a variety of red and orange foods. Is there any truth to this regarding exactly Tigers, or is it only about multicolour & varying food in general, with which any snail would be healthier and thus look better?

[Liguus]

I know that if crustaceans have some deficiencies (like beta-carotene) then their exoskeleton colors starts to fade each time they molt.

I guess the same could be true for snails and they may start producing better colored shell material on colorful food, but this is just a guess...I have no idea what compounds would have to be in their diet for that to happen, or if anyone has actually tested this.

[etana]

Thanks for replying anyway.

As far as I'm aware, too boring a diet (like one type of light green food day after day) makes snails ill and if they're in growing age, their shells will grow badly. On the other hand it's been proven (with Arianta arbustorum I recall?) that genetics determine the colour of the shell more strongly than their habitat and food does. Neither of those are proof of exactly Tiger snail's shell growing, or not growing, a brighter orange colour with exactly red and orange food. Hmm.

True though that different coloured vegs have different vitamins and other things in them, so for the snail's health alone I'll definitely offer any colours of food.

[muddydragon]

i *think* that some snails are more heavily genetically influenced (Cepaea) for example. Hoever food and environment do have an effect. Slow growth tends to result in more darker stripes (in margies for instance) but that's also got a gentic element to it i believe. I do remember reading somewhere that the food "Impurities" end up int he shell so the colour of the shell could be influenced to a degree by the types of food. but i really don't know anywhere near enough about this.

But as you say a varie diet is bound to be more important to the health of the snail.

[etana]

Thanks to you too Muddydragon.

Good point about the Cepaea, indeed they always seem to grow the same yellow (or any other base colour) they always have, no matter what they eat. Then again some wild Arianta have very strange shells, like partly red, partly brown, partly spotty, etc, while my young ones born in captivity and fed foods chosen by me don't have such variations.

I do offer a lot of red and orange foods at the moment, for example for some reason it's easy to find organic red sweet potato here and all my snails are really into it. Ewert also loves rotten carrots, and tomatoes on the verge of going bad, so actually bright red and orange foods are the only ones I've seen him eat a lot even though there has been something green on offer too.
It worries me that every time I went to the pet store he's from to drool over him, all I saw on his food dish was courgette. His shell is a kind of dull colour compared to what I see in pictures.

We'll see what happens as he grows.

[etana]

All right. I can already tell you, after a couple weeks, that Ewert is having one heck of a growth spurt and the base colour of the new shell growth is very bright compared to the rest of his shell. Which, by the way, has also turned a less dull colour lately. I never thought he wasn't pretty, but he's turning even prettier.

He's been eating swede, red sweet potato, carrots, tomato, a little bit of salad & plant leaves, and snail poop. Also substrate, I suppose, and cuttlebone. I've offered him fresh, useasoned meat, but he's not big on it (though he did eat the poop of a snail who'd had a lot of meat earlier).

It really seems that he wasn't fed right in the pet store. Still this is no evidence that all the yellow and red foods are giving him any other colour than that of a healthy, happy snail, but it's good to see this happening.

[tangowhiskeygirl]

I know that especially carrots and beetroot can end up in the pigment of certain animals (even in humans). I'm not sure it applies to snails as well, but even if it doesn't change the colour of their shells, it's probably a healthy diet

[Cashell]

This is somewhat random and somewhat relevant at the same time, but I've read that flamingos are another perfect example of animals that have their pigmentation influenced from the food they eat.

[etana]

Lol, nice and random, thanks Cashell.

Snails and flamingos probably share lots of genes. 50% of human dna is similar to banana plant dna, or something like that, too.

[muddydragon]

With flamingos in zoos they have to give them special pellets to stop them turning white

[cliath]

Nov 23, 2014 10:45:07 GMT muddydragon said:

With flamingos in zoos they have to give them special pellets to stop them turning white

So would it be possible to turn them other colours? Like green or blue?

[etana]

Lol @ the flamingo discussion. Anyway I'll post a close-up of Ewert soon so you all can see how much he's changed.

[etana]

Okay, not exactly a close-up, but this is the best I could do this morning:


Ewert arrived to live with me somewhere between the two big dark stripes on his shell. He's a brighter colour altogether now than he was then, but the newest growth after the second stripe truly stands out. I think his body looks stronger too.

[muddydragon]

Ewert is gorgeous! love his flesh colour (i know that's not what you were showing us) but it's lovely

Nov 23, 2014 14:23:46 GMT cliath said:

So would it be possible to turn them other colours? Like green or blue?

Sadly i doubt it

[etana]

Nov 24, 2014 9:45:44 GMT muddydragon said:

Ewert is gorgeous! love his flesh colour (i know that's not what you were showing us) but it's lovely

Oh I agree that it is, and he has two cute little buttons for eyes too! I often laugh that he resembles a teddy bear quite a bit for a snail.

[cliath]

He looks great!

[etana]

Thanks!

[etana]

Another thing: in the pet store he grew stripes. Very obvious dark stripes. Now he grows patterns. Is this possibly because he's grown faster here, on the better diet?

[muddydragon]

almost certainly. The patterns are more the genetic influence of his colour. those very dark solid stripes are often caused by slow growth mainly from poor conditions or food or due to repairing the shell. If a snail goes through a slow growth patch they almost always grow dark band (in those species that grow dark bands). they still get bands from time to time that aren't from slow growth though just not as often

[etana]

Oh, yay! I'm so happy that he's now growing like he's supposed to.

Thanks, muddydragon

[etana]

Update on Ewert's shell. He's grown so much after the earlier 24th Nov photo, but he also has a weird shell damage. It's been there a couple weeks, and it seems to be getting worse as he grows.



It looks a bit like he's hurt his mantle? 


As I was taking these pictures yesterday, I was talking to him about how I was getting worried about his shell damage. When I returned him to the tank, I put him on top of food but he snailed to a cuttlebone. He ate it for a couple hours, making a huge mark on it, then he moved to a scallop shell and took bites of it, and then he rasped at another piece of cuttlebone for a while. Lol, as if he'd have decided to convince me he wants to repair the shell, by taking calcium from three different sources and all.

Here's one more of him from yesterday, with his shell in a different position:

[muddydragon]

Well he's certainly trying to get it sorted by the sound of things . normally bits like this do fix themselves over time but it can take a while once it's reached that pinched up state. Sometimes these things just happen and there's no obvoious reason (genetics can also play a part) I have heard of some people having sucess with mixing limestone flour + water and plastering it on over the damage at the edge and better growth seen after that (but this could just be co-incidental).

[etana]

Thanks for replying. I really hope it'll work out for him. When the damage first appeared I thought he'd just bumped into something in the tank, such as an underground part of the tree root, but at this point it makes no sense for him to bump into the same thing over and over again and damage himself further.

I think I'll keep my fingers off the damaged area, unless it gets significantly worse still.

That sounds a little weird that it could be genetic for him since there's nothing like this in his smaller whorls, but then again he was growing very differently back then, having been on a too simple diet in a stressful environment (the pet store). Maybe it's just hard to handle when suddenly you're growing so much faster...?

[cliath]

My fulica had something like this, it was two white lines of bad shell growth, that grew with the shell for a couple of months. Recently it has stopped growing with the shell, and he has lovely shell growth now. I think it could be related to his previous poor diet, as mine were mostly just feed lettuce and cucumber too.

[etana]

Glad to hear your snail's shell is growing better now, cliath. I hope Ewert's will soon as well.

I wonder how we could get word around to people who sell snails, both pet store people and other individuals, that they need variety in the diet? Heck, they look so much better if they're healthy, one would think they'd sell for better prices too!