What do snails eat at home and in nature

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

It is customary to admire snails, use them in medicine and even in cooking, but few people know what snails eat. But these mollusks, like all living creatures, need food. In numerous encyclopedias, you can find detailed information about the life of these animals in nature, but especially the question of what snails eat is of interest to those who keep mollusks in an aquarium.

Homemade

Before thinking about the diet of your pets, you need to understand their structure and features of the digestive system. Only snails have an oral cavity, slugs do not, so their food comes through the nipples. The owners of shells, unlike other types of mollusks, have a mouth that contains a muscular tongue and 14 thousand teeth, with which they grind food like a file. Such a unique feature as the presence of a mouth allows these animals to consume grass, vegetables and fruits. This easily solves the problem of those people who decide to have mollusks in the aquarium and do not know what domestic snails eat. They are happy to taste seaweed, as well asbacterial formations, thus contributing to the purification of the environment. But you can treat them with a fruit and vegetable mixture, and dead plants. But fatty, spicy, smoked, s alty, sweet, sour - in general, everything that usually makes up the diet of a modern person is not suitable for shellfish: they can seriously suffer from such food. Grapes, apricots, pears, watermelons, melons, fragrant berries and tropical fruits are most loved by them. If you decide to treat your pet with vegetables, then offer him cabbage, carrots, pumpkins, eggplants, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, cucumbers, corn, legumes. As a special delicacy, knowing what snails eat, you can introduce cottage cheese and eggs into their diet.

Achatina

Dead plants are also preferred by those snails that can often be seen in the garden. Contrary to popular belief, they are not dangerous for garden plants, on the contrary: animals destroy weeds and damaged inanimate vegetation. Although sometimes they can eat young plants of various cultures. Sometimes on a grass bush you can see a whole group of mollusks that will not leave until the plant is completely destroyed. These are Achatinas who prefer to consume food in this way, in groups.

Predators

In addition to herbivores, among the gastropods there are also predators that eat small crustaceans and insects.

Minerals

Thinking about the conditions of detention and the question of what snails eat in an aquarium, it is necessaryremember that they need calcium, which is part of the shells, for normal life. That is why pets need hard water, in which various mixtures can be added to increase hardness, with a pH of at least 7. Shells are amazing and attractive creatures that can be kept at home. And in order for them to always feel good, you need to learn about what snails eat and make sure that they have enough minerals, especially calcium.