snailfox
Archachatina marginata
Posts: 30
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Post by snailfox on Oct 11, 2022 16:21:39 GMT
Hello hopefully someone can help me.. I’ve noticed when a couple of my snails have passed, these tiny little white-ish Colored bugs appear on them. I know they aren’t the slug mites as I have a separate terrarium of wild caught snails that came heavily infested with the awful slug mites so I’m very familiar with the appearance and movements of those.. these are different.. I never see them in the terrarium unless one has passed away.
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Post by Symphony on Oct 11, 2022 20:03:49 GMT
If their bodies are narrow and long they might be springtails. They are harmless. They usually feed on decaying matter which might be why you found them on dead snails.
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snailfox
Archachatina marginata
Posts: 30
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Post by snailfox on Oct 12, 2022 8:29:16 GMT
If their bodies are narrow and long they might be springtails. They are harmless. They usually feed on decaying matter which might be why you found them on dead snails. Many thanks for your reply, these seem to appear a bit fatter then springtails.. but maybe fat springtails? Not very familiar with those!
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Post by SuspiciousBagel on Oct 23, 2022 18:00:29 GMT
Hi again snailfox, Another late response to one of your threads- if possible do you have photos of them? or are you able to do a drawing of what they look like? To be honest, if you're sure they're not snail mites they could be some other type of soil mite. I had little black/brown mites all over my tank a while back and they turned out to be soil mites. They seem to like feeding off rotting matter so.. in the nicest way possible your snail was probably seen as such. Even if you cant find out what exactly they are as long as they don't appear to be hurting your live snails and are crawling all over them i wouldn't worry. If you really want to do something about them, like they DO seem harmful or the population gets out of hand in the enclosure (unlikely) you can buy hypoasis mites which are predatory and will kill any tiny things in the tank like soil mites, snail mites, springtails etc but not harm your snails.
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snailfox
Archachatina marginata
Posts: 30
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Post by snailfox on Oct 26, 2022 22:40:50 GMT
Hi again snailfox, Another late response to one of your threads- if possible do you have photos of them? or are you able to do a drawing of what they look like? To be honest, if you're sure they're not snail mites they could be some other type of soil mite. I had little black/brown mites all over my tank a while back and they turned out to be soil mites. They seem to like feeding off rotting matter so.. in the nicest way possible your snail was probably seen as such. Even if you cant find out what exactly they are as long as they don't appear to be hurting your live snails and are crawling all over them i wouldn't worry. If you really want to do something about them, like they DO seem harmful or the population gets out of hand in the enclosure (unlikely) you can buy hypoasis mites which are predatory and will kill any tiny things in the tank like soil mites, snail mites, springtails etc but not harm your snails. Many thanks for the response! I’d say they are just circular in shape, kind of a off white colour and very very slow moving. I’ve spotted a couple walking on the outside of the shells but they don’t seem to do much, I agree with you that it makes sense that these must be some sort of a food or soil mite.. as they are definitely not the awful slug mite. Makes sense that they would feed on the deceased ones.
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