Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've been reading how snails are a possible important food for uros. How many of you are actually feeding your animals snails and are you getting them from your gardens or ordering them from bio supply houses? Also, what are your uros favorite food items?
Best....
Jim

Mine really love lobster roaches. The little guys (ebans, phants) all sleep on the rim of the feeding cups and in the plants overlooking it, waiting for food. Its hilarious to see 6 or 7 little geckos all sleeping in a 4x4" square around and on the feed cup.. They are so funny. One of my fimbriatus sleeps on the wall just a few inches above her cup as well.I havent had the opportunity to try snails, and they havent figured out the pill bugs are food yet...
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In studies that I've read female Uros will readily eat snails during egg production due to the abudance of calcium in their shells. Juveniles, of both sex, have also been observed dining on es cargot. Adult males, however, tend to shy away from snails, again, according to the literature. I haven't attempted feeding snails; 1. they're not as readily available as other feeder inverts. 2. collecting them in the wild is a BIG gamble due to their notorious nature of being intermediate host for a number of parasites. I try to mix up the food intake of my gex between crix, Mad. hissing roaches, and I'm starting in on lobster roaches. I have yet to witness my gex pass up a roach.

I've just got fims so far and I've been varying it between crix, juvy hissing roaches and juvy death's head roaches. Just wasn't sure how much trouble I should go to in trying to obtain snails, especially if the girls need them for calcium. Everything else they get gets dusted with cal and vits, however.
Best....
Jim

i've actually got some snails breeding in a few of my tanks, and i can say i have at least seen my female pietschmanni go after one, although i think the shell was too tough, so she dropped it. i basically heard this click clack noise coming from one of the cages, turned around and saw she had grabbed it and i think she might have been trying to pull the snail out or else smash its shell.

I have had lobster roaches for about a year or so and I haven't fed a whole lot of them to any of my geckos. I have a very diverse collection or rare geckos and I usually only refer to the roaches if I run out of crickets. I don't like the thought of roaches getting out and multiplying in my house!!!lol. I have a nice little group of Uroplatus and I picked up some green roaches that get about 3/4-1" total length. I forget the name, but I bought them a long time ago when I got my first ebenaui in case he was a pain to get to eat, but he wasn't, he ate some crickets the very first night. I love these little guys, I'm addicted to the ebenaui, I need to get some phants. But anyway, my question is, how well do your Uroplatus eat out of a bowl? I figure that if I start using roaches I need a dish in there with some vasaline on it.
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Leland
"Captive Bred Geckos from Around the World"
www.dwgeckos.com

bowls work well for leaftails but theyre notorious for dive bombing their prey. a lot of people say that they line their feeding bowls with foam or somthing like that but like to use a light weight "deli cup". what i do is take two bowls of similar size and place water in one and set the actual feeding bowl in it so that it kinda floats. this helps absorb the blow from the leaftails lunge and also helps keepin the humidity up.

ive thrown a couple large ground snails in with my henkels but i didnt keep an eye on the snails to see if they disappeared. But i just aquired a male henkel from a guy in hendersonville nc who specializes in terrestrial snails. he s always at the shows in raleigh. he told me that the fims and the lineds were the only ones that really cared for the snails.

I have observed my henks eating snails and know of a couple institutions with very successful leaf-tail breeding projects that have also had good response to snails... mostly with henks and fims...
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Ben

Hey Ben,

What if anything do you do to prep the snails for feeding the henkeli? And where do you get them from, the garden? The main reason I'm wondering...is this comment from Whoboy:

collecting them in the wild is a BIG gamble due to their notorious nature of being intermediate host for a number of parasites

I know for human consumption they feed the snails corn meal for several weeks..then eat them. I would love to try new feeding sorces for the uroplatus, and this seems like a cheap and easy one. thanks in advance.
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ryan
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Uroplatus sikorae

i know a guy who breeds all kinds of terrestrial snails. he could probably set you up with a colony of them. i forgot what kind they were but theyre very prolific.