Yes, the shells and the whole crawfish are totally digestible. Go on youtube and type in "monitor lizard eats crawfish" and I have a young male Argus trying to figure out how to tackle a live big crawdaddy for the first time. After a couple weeks (yes, I fed and still do sometimes feed craws), they get really good at how to dismantle and swallow them properly so they don't get their mouths poked. It all becomes poop in a day and seafood has it's own "flavor" when it comes out compared to feeding all mice (worse smell with seafoods for some reason).

The exoskeletons (shells) of crabs and craws and lobsters, insects and all arthropods is a composite mix of chitin (sort of a leathery, elastic polymer) and Calcium Carbonate. Pure chitin is actually soft like a caterpillars skin. Harder shells have more Ca in them. It's a fine food source and can be cheap. Mice work well too. I think you could succeed a lot of ways and it's about what's most economical and convenient for the keeper and as long as it's whole prey, it tends to work - fishes, rodents, dusted insects, crabs, whatever.

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