This morning I woke up again to an even harder rainfall result than last night. I decided to go snail hunting. I had almost given up, I had only collected two small snails, when I accidentally happened onto a family of snails. It turned into a family feeding affair:

s996.photobucket.com/albums/af85/jcannon..._oscar_champions.jpg

Before I left for work, Ash had already consumed 6 snails, and Snow had consumed 4.

so you put shell and all in ???

Seems the shell is their favorite part. They eat the entire thing. You can hear them crunching the shell and all. They spit none of the snail out.

Unfortunately, Ash has become quite addicted to snails, and (s)he is passing up other forms of food now in favor of waiting for me to deliver more snails.

Apparently snails are quite the staple of oscars in the wild. In some bodies of water, oscars live almost exclusively on snails.

And yes, Ash at the biggest snail you see in bag WHOLE, one shot.

i might have to get sum next time it rains insted of
lettin my nephew stomp on them lol

do you think oscars would eat trumpet snailes,or fresh water tadpole snailes, as ive seen these on ebay,

Oscars will eat anything that will fit in their mouth however, I have seen a couple of posts today that say the trumpet pointy snails are not that healthy for fish to eat.

I am pondering starting a snail farm. I read up on it this morning. All you need is a 5 gallon aquarium, some soil, some plants, a water bottle to spray it to keep it damp, and that is it.

They do prefer warmer temperatures, so you may want some sort of heater, but... it costs about $20 to setup a snail farm. I am pondering setting up a snail farm in the sump.

I bet they LOVED those snails... LOL... Not my idea of a great breakfast, but hey, whatever makes em happy!

be careful about making snail farm; we had some at my college as a differetn pet and they bred out of hand. they were desperate to get rid of them lol Sounds a good idea thou, I have never thought to go out hunting for snails i give them earth worms but i normally throw the snails and slugs out of my garden like a catapult trip.

So it rained a lot more today, I picked up 10 more snails. Popped them into the tank for grins and giggles and the loaches got into the act this time. Some of the loaches were actually eating the snail out of their shells!

Here is another fun fact. The blood parrot is quite the poacher. Some of the snails the oscars 'cannot quite finish the first time,' so the oscar will spit it out and and put it back in its mouth another way. When the blood parrot sees this, it will actually try to steal the snail before the oscar can put it back in it's mouth.

The BP will also try to steal partially chewed food (jumbo krill) from the flowerhorn too, because the flowerhorn can't quite eat it whole the first time yet.

Just thought I would share.