Tolerance of African giant land snails (Archachatina marginata) to varying levels of table Salt

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to determine the growth response of African giant land snail Archachatina marginata fed diets containing different levels of sodium chloride. One hundred and twenty snails were subjected to four dietary treatments of T1, T2, T3 and T4 with 0%, 0.25%, 0.5% and 0.75% sodium chloride respectively. The treatments were replicated thrice with 10 snails per replicate. The measured parameters included weight gain, feed intake, shell length, shell circumference and shell thickness. Feed cost, cost of feed per kg weight gain and feed conversion ratio were also calculated. Results showed that there were significant differences (p < 0.05) in average daily weight gain, average daily feed intake, feed conversion ratio, feed cost and shell thickness but there were no significant differences (p > 0.05) in cost of feed per kg weight gain, shell length and shell circumference in the snails fed the treatment diets. Treatment 2 had the highest average daily weight gain (0.07±0.01), average daily feed intake (0.91±0.08) and feed cost (7.19±0.64) but the lowest feed conversion ratio (13.15±61.76) while treatment 1 had the lowest average daily weight gain (0.04±0.01), average daily feed intake (0.70±0.20) and feed cost (5.54±0.18) but the highest feed conversion ratio (15.86±0.5). This shows that inclusion of sodium chloride above 0.25% in the diet of Archachatina marginata affects both the feed intake and weight gain of the snails.