Can anyone help me with a recipe for snail food based on agar-agar which also to include all the necessary factors to provide them with a proper nutrition?
Does anyone know what is the average daily consumption for such a feed for Helix aspersa adults (mean weight: 10g)?
I have found information in diferent articles related to the use of agar agar medium for this.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20711720
There are some papers by Alan Beeby that suggest adding wheatgerm and CaCO3 to agar. While he fed his snails ad libitum, I think you can get an idea of average daily consumption from them.
Article Adaptation by an urban population of the snail Helix aspersa...
George,
What metal solutions do you want to apply?
Both for essential and non-essential metals, using finely-ground powders is likely to be more representative of the chemical species the snails encounter in the wild. Adding these to a well-mixed, and finely-ground dry food can be the best way to quantify consumption. Our method is described in
"Sources of variation in the assimilation of lead by a common gastropod sentinel Cantareus aspersus" Beeby, A & Richmond, L, 2011, Sci Total Environ. 409, 5499-5504.
By changing the food every other day, rather than allowing them to feed ad libitum, we could make precise measurements of their food and metal intake, whilst the snails themselves grew rapidly, both in their soft tissues and shell. Note however that daily food consumption and growth was episodic in all individuals, from all populations, in our laboratory cultures.
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