EMERGENCY?? Snails ate flour/water mix. Is it dangerous?

[horrr0r]

Ok so on some wiki how article it suggested making a thick goop of flour and water and putting it in a little tray and your snails will enjoy playing around in it. I did this but I didn't realize til it was too late that they were drinking it! I can it see through the garden snails shells, it looks like one or two whorls are white, and for both them and my GALs, I can see thru their body is filled with white!

So I Googled snails eating flour and didn't find anything except for a warning against feeding snails pasta because they can bloat and die, and against starchy foods like rice.

How bad is this? I'm so mad and scared! I don't wanna lose my snails!

I removed the tray obviously, but what else can I do?

[etana]

Unfortunately I can't say about the prognosis of your snails, but I need you to link the Wikipedia article, because it has to be edited. There are much safer ways to give snails things to play with. For example a little tray of well-soaked spirulina powder will be good for playing in, and very nutritious to eat.

I really hope your snails will make it. :/

[Cashell]

Jun 22, 2015 15:02:58 GMT horrr0r said:

Ok so on some wiki how article it suggested making a thick goop of flour and water and putting it in a little tray and your snails will enjoy playing around in it. I did this but I didn't realize til it was too late that they were drinking it! I can it see through the garden snails shells, it looks like one or two whorls are white, and for both them and my GALs, I can see thru their body is filled with white!

So I Googled snails eating flour and didn't find anything except for a warning against feeding snails pasta because they can bloat and die, and against starchy foods like rice.

How bad is this? I'm so mad and scared! I don't wanna lose my snails!

I removed the tray obviously, but what else can I do?

This sounds like a recipe for snail dumplings... Just ridiculous. Sorry, I'm not criticizing you not knowing better at that time, but the person who wrote that.

[Liguus]

That should indeed be edited... letting snails play in flour and water? lol. It sounds to me like someone trying to trick people into making escargot.

Your snails should be fine though. The danger is when they eat dry grain products which can expand in their stomach. If the flour was good and wet with water it should pass with no trouble at all.

[Zorst]

You could try giving them some nice easy foods to eat like cucumber, strawberries, melon and things like that that don't need much digesting but move through them quickly the help clean it out of there systems.

Let us know how they are please.

Zorst

[astana]

The problem with starchy foods is that it can expand within the gut, causing fatal blockages, retention, etc. Of course, that's only if they ate the adequate amount of dry starchy foods for that to happen. As your snails did not digest dry but rather wet starches, I'm fairly certain they will be okay.

If you want to check whether some foods are safe, a fairly thorough list of safe/unsafe foods can be found here: petsnails.proboards.com/thread/9416/feed-snails

[horrr0r]

They turned out fine. They eventually pooped it out, which was very big white poops, but they seemed to stay stuck like the snails had difficulty expelling them all the way, so I just carefully took a tweezers and pulled them out/off the snails. And when I did that, the poops broke often they were crumbly, it seemed it was just pure flour expelled from their body like they didn't digest it at all. I'm glad they're ok. Thanks everyone. Not going to do that again. And I'm going to find that wiki how and change it!

[etana]

I'm very glad to hear they're okay.

[Zorst]

That's sure good to hear.

Zorst