Getting rid of bush snails?
 

I have 2 terrariums containing mostly mounted miniature orchids (on bark or tree fern), with leftover moss from a show in the bottom. I seem to have introduced some bush snails with the moss, and they are now happily munching my plants.
I looked at an earlier thread on snails, and it seems not much touches those little ones.. Ray mentioned 1% cinnamon oil in 70% rubbing alcohol being effective: does one spray the solution on the plant, soak the plant or what? Any other suggestions?

If your terraria are airtight (or could be temporarily made that way, you may try flooding them with carbon dioxide--but make sure you are in a well vented room (i.e. open the windows). There was a thread somewhere in the terrarium forum about doing this, I believe they used dry ice as the co2 source.


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I found that Sevin will eliminate the Bush Snail problem.

Welcome to the Orchid Board! Sorry it's under these circumstances.

In the top maroon menu there is a Search function. If you search on bush snail you will find previous threads dealing with these. I've been lucky so far. I seem to recall standard snail bait does work if applied properly.

Ioana, it is a tough one to combat. I have tried many methods. As the consequence, I probably made more damage than leaving them alone. There are several chemicals, which can reduce the population. But the complete elimination is tough. At the end, I had to do complete repotting with careful washing of roots, and spraying high concentration Physan-20 to the grow area.

Among the chemicals, Sevin, as Leafmite suggested, seems to be most effective (among easily available). I mix 1.5Oz/gallon of Sevin with Physan-20 (1 tsp/gallon). These 2 chemicals attack different aspects of snails. Then it would be also good to add Neem oil to the tank mix. An experiment by Dr. Hollingsworth's group showed that neem oil make the snails hungry, so they walk around more, and get exposed to the chemicals. You can spray and drench this all over. You'll need to repeat the treatment every 3 weeks. I think 2 weeks are the time for the eggs to hatch.

I do not see any phytotoxicity from Sevin. Some people are scared of Physan-20, and it is true that some weak plants could be influenced by it. And I can see that there is a possibility of mild retardation of growth. I'm not too concerned for my orchids at this interval (every 3 weeks) and this concentration. But it is probably better not to use it too frequently.

The other way is to put the mounted orchids under the water. It is better if you can let the leaves stick out. The snails will start to crawl out after a couple hours. But you have to be careful. I forgot about it and I let them soak for longer than 24 hours. Most plants get suffocated, and were dead. I think 6 hours or so is the appropriate time.

There is a paper (by Dr. Hollingsworth's group) suggesting 1-2% caffeine is an effective control. Never try this. I tried it since the paper said that they didn't see phytotoxicity. In 1-2 days, the roots stopped growing, and many of the orchids died soon. Caffeine is known to suppress root growth, and it is highly toxic to orchids at this concentration. Phalaenopsis were severely affected, and I believe many Cattleya could survive (retarded the growth for a long time).

Here is a paper related to this topic. http://www2.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/mp-1.pdf

Estacion, actually, their experiments (which is in a different paper) showed that current snail baits don't work so well for bush snails because they don't get attracted to it. If the snail touch it by accident, then it could kill it, but it isn't effective without a proper attractant.

Thank you so much for all the suggestions! Greatly appreciated! Imay try to drown them first.. least toxic method. But now I have lots of alternatives to try!

Before you do the chemical thing... try sluggo, which is a non toxic control used for snails/slugs in gardens. It contains iron phosphate which they digest and eventually die from.

I grow in tanks and bush snails have been a constant annoying problem in the past, but have found this stuff to be pretty effective with regular pellet application (just spreading the little pieces here and there amongst mounts and pots) maybe every few months whenever i see the snail problem get bad.

They seem to be attracted to it enough, but yeah you can never get rid of them 100%.

also nematodes that can eat snails and such can also sometimes come on board with mounts. They're gross little things but I've noticed them around and have watched a couple "attacking" the snails and think they've been helping for the last year. I think you can buy nematodes for snails/slugs, usually used for garden, but not sure exactly if they might be too big, or you'd get too many for a tank...

Thank you!

I bought an orchid infected with bush snails about five or six years ago and that was how I first met them. I could not identify them, but, wow, they multiply. They really liked my non-orchids and everything had holes in them and missing flowers. I tried many things, including finally picking them off when I saw them, but when I applied the powdered Sevin (not mixed with anything) to the top of the soil/medium of my plants and the leaves of the orchids, the little bodies were everywhere. These little buggers are but a memory for me now (a bad one).

The only problem I have seen with Sevin is that it causes fruit drop with the fruit trees and it encourages mites. I have not tried it with blooming or budded orchids so I am not sure how it affects them. However, if you have snails or Japanese beetles, you are going to lose your flowers/fruits anyway so it is worth it.

About coffee...I use the spent coffee grounds with success for some of my other plants that are magnets for scale and mealy bugs and produce edible leaves, fruit or flowers. Since I started a few years ago, I have not had the issues with scale and mealy bugs that were once my nightmare and prevented me from using the leaves, fruit and flowers due to the dependency on systemics to clear the problem (In my collection, the Theobroma cacao, cinnamon, citrus, jasmine, banana, and Manikara zapota are magnets for scale and mealy bugs.). I have not used them with orchids. I have not noticed any toxicity with these specific plants. However, other factors in my care might be preventing any issues, as might my choice in plants.

Thanks for all the info! I'll try one or more of the solutions (I found an earlier post by Ray saying he just sprayed the cinnamon leaf oil + isopropyl alcohol on his terrarium plants, so that is how to do that in case anybody was wondering). Drowning sounds good... but i'm sure won't get rid of the eggs. So repeat treatments are in order, I guess. Well it'll force me to clean out the terrariums, not a bad thing. :-P