Zero maintenance pet - Oxychilus cellarius, the blue snail.

[knifegill]

This is my carnivorous snail. He lives in a plastic salad box with a pile of leaves and mud and eats the nematodes that came naturally in the muck. I've had him for quite awhile (several months) now and only in the first week did I really make feeding efforts. I know I'll eventually need to add some new leaves, wash out the box, etc., but things are still looking good and he's very active. No babies yet, but whatever. Pretty cool for a thing I found at a bus stop.

Gotta love the slug-collecting thumbnail. Dirt proves you were busy.

 

[coura]

You wont get any babys unless you find another one What I would love to get as far carnivorus snails go is Euglandina sp I hope Im spelling rigth

 

[davo]

Is this guy native to where you live?

You wont get any babys unless you find another one What I would love to get as far carnivorus snails go is Euglandina sp I hope Im spelling rigth

ha, get some Euglandina rosea to keep with those Partulas eh?

 

[Zfishies]

I saw one of those nxt to my pond, and ignored him... idk if was the same type tho

 

[snakeguy101]

snails are cool but I feel like they should be an ornament that is added to another animals enclosure... I can't imagine it being very fascinating to watch a snail crawl around like it would be to watch a frilled dragon catch crickets or a snake plan its escape... plus you don't have the ability to take it out and interact with it much.

I bet a few of these would go great with some dart frogs though. What do you think Kearth?

 

[knifegill]

Hey, that's a good idea! What kind of critters can a snail live with? I just sort of assumed that since snails are such omnivores and this one is a carnivore, there wouldn't be too many cohab options.
I just found another gigantic red snail. I wonder if they could cohab? Or if I should stop gathering other gastropods and focus on my red slug program...

 

[krichardson]

I've seen empy shells that look like the one yours has in and around my backyard but I've never seen the snail though.

 

[coura]

You can combine snails with other invertebrates without any trobble. Ive seen pretty cool setups with african giant milipedes, snails, wood lice and roaches living happily side by side.

 

[knifegill]

Sound cool. I might combine my woodlice with the little blue guy. I wonder about the big red snail, though. If it turns out I can keep him, I'd be afraid of him eating the little blue one.
And I just read about a tiny snail that stabs other snails or slugs with a calcium carbonate tooth and follows the trail of blood and slime until it finds the dead body and eats it. These are the little things that worry me about combining creatures. You can never be sure what will eat what, you know?

 

[knifegill]

Since I'm so paranoid but do like the colony idea, I simply have added to and refreshed the blue snail tank. I added a lot of brand new soil and moved everybody to a larger, cleaner container. In the old soil, which I kept a little of and kept as many critters from as I could, I found a thriving population of roundworms (snail dinners), a cigarette butt (whoops! Environment replicated a little too accurately!), three or four earthworms and one fertile and one bored worm egg where I'd only put one earthworm in there to aerate the soil, a full-grown and apparently hibernating weevil, and two of something like an amphipod. Also, three plants have sprouted. All that in a small fistful of soil I've let run on autopilot in a closed container on the shady porch for six months. I only fed and watered it once. VERY fun stuff. Here's big papa and the new youngins from under one of my flowerpots:

My little carnivores: