I’ve been really curious about these guys since I heard of them! Does anyone keep snail/slug eaters and want to share their experience with them?
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Snail eating snakes fascinate me too! I’d love to know if they can eat pre-killed or require live. And if live, where can you source them parasite-free? 
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I would imagine the only way would be a nice bloodline of aquatic snails. If they could eat aquatic snails that is. Would be pretty easy to breed aquatic snails for em if they can.
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I’ve not done a lot of research, but I read one account where the keeper was trying to breed land snails for their snail-eater and they were having issues keeping up with its appetite. When I read that I envisioned a massive snail setup, like 4 x 2 x 2, with snails of all species cruising around. I wonder if the upkeep would be hard? Not that I’m planning on breeding snails, hehe. Though I agree, I had aquatic snails and they were super prolific and very easy keepers.
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I have spoken with importers that have kept these both in the short and long term.Most of them report that these animals are not particularly apt to transition over to pre-killed
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These same importers have told me that they pretty much just pull from what they can find outside. Mentality being that it is more important to have the animal eating than have them be squeaky clean
Speaking from the broader (and somewhat controversial) mentality of it - Animals that are kept in otherwise healthy and stress-free conditions are able to handle low-to-moderate parasite levels
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Once you have a colony established, they are reported to be fairly easy to maintain and provide a variety of sizes. The issue most people have is that they get the snake first and then try to start a snail colony. This is pretty much a guaranteed way to fail
If you were to want to take a try at one of these species I would very very VERY strongly recommend that you begin building your snail colony a minimum of a year before you ever try to purchase the snake. Because the shipping of live land snails between states is illegal in the US, you would need to source some from the wild wherever you live or be lucky enough to live in one of the very few states that have an escargot farm or a scientific supply warehouse. If you source wild snails, I would raise them in a quarantine-type container and check regularly for eggs. Once you find eggs, transfer those to a new, clean enclosure, preferably in a totally different location from the quarantine container, and let them hatch there which, in theory, should help you start with a parasite-free population (assuming no vertical transmission). You can maintain the wild snails for as long as you like to act as an “egg farm” or, once your clean population has begun actively breeding on their own, you can release the wild ones back to the outside
Once you have a stable captive population of feeders, set up a second container. Every other day, begin removing 10-20 adult snails from the original breeding container and transfer them to the new container. See how well the established container maintains a stable population. If the original container appears to suffer a catastrophic population crash, then you do not have a snail colony that can keep up with one of these snakes. However, you now have two feeder/breeder containers. Allow both of these to establish and then set up a third container. Repeat the cycle as needed until you get to a point where you can pull an accumulated 10-20 snails from your containers every other day (e.g., 5-10 each from two containers or 1-2 each from five containers or… ) and not have a population crash
THIS is the point where you are ready to buy your snake
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An issue here is that aquatic snails tend to have operculum and most species of slug/snail eater are incapable of getting through these (and even those that can seem more to rely on a strike that is faster than the snail’s ability to withdraw and less on actually cantilevering the operculum open)
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