How to remove snails from your bioactive habitat

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How to remove snails from your bioactive habitat

Let’s face it, ensuring that absolutely no hitchhikers arrive in your bioactive substrate, plants, biodegradables and natural accents can be a daunting challenge. Sometimes, even with the appropriate steps such as freezing, baking or thoroughly rinsing you can still have outside invaders or that one missed pest during the quarantine/cleaning process. One of those common issues are dealing with snails.

Snails, while to some may not be bad; can be an absolute nightmare to deal with in your habitat. They reproduce every quickly and efficiently, will eat your plants (can even damage some plants roots, depending on the species), eat eggs of some inhabitants, outcompete your clean-up crew and can quickly spread enclosure to enclosure if left untreated. That is why, when purchasing your leaf litter and plants to thoroughly inspect and clean them to try and prevent this issue as much as possible. However, if you find yourself in a bind you can take some of these steps to try and eliminate them from your bioactive habitat.

Remove any leftover food from the enclosure. Thoroughly inspect, wipe down any feeding ledges, leaves and glass to remove any uneaten pre-mixed diets or fruits/veggies. If left unchecked this is a magnet for snails.
Reduce your water sources. If you allow your tank to thoroughly dry out the snails will have issues thriving and will dry out an die (depending on species). If taking this approach, ensure your tank does not completely dry out to prevent loss of your essential clean up crew. Also, keep in mind your inhabitant to take extra steps to ensure they stay hydrated.
Add predatory snails. I know, fighting snails with snails seems contradictory, however; if your tank is humid enough, and you are not able to try it out entirely introducing predator snails (only a few) will quickly dissolve the existing population of pest snails, leaving you with only a few specimens of predatory snails inhabiting your bioactive enclosure. To keep these snails, the tank must be consistently wet with very high humidity.
Remove the snails manually. You can utilize a pair of tweezers and just pull, pull, pull! This usually does the trick after a few weeks of consistent pulling and patience.
Create a snail trap. Get a slice of banana, lettuce or other fruit and place it on the bottom of your enclosure. After waiting a few hours, go grab the bait and dispose with all the snails attached to it. This has been a proven method for us at the Bio Dude. You may want to have a pair of tweezers to remove any clean up crew that are also attracted.