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Post by feebix on Apr 11, 2009 9:28:06 GMT
Forum zombie !
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Post by AlienSnail on Apr 11, 2009 15:29:46 GMT
Oh no, what a horrible thing to happen Really sorry about your snails that didn't make it. I hope you can get to the bottom of it and sort it out with the sellers! Thanks hun, I'll let you all know...... Forum zombie ! Yep, MorningCoffee the official Forum Zombie has her name up in lights at the top of the home page in the news fader banner. In fact you have your name up there too Feebix as March's POTM winner, though that may all change next month......... lol
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Post by feebix on Apr 11, 2009 19:10:58 GMT
Oooh cool !
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Post by AlienSnail on Apr 16, 2009 15:59:06 GMT
Well, I can only humbly apologise to Defenders! The little bits of metal are NOT metal at all, though they look very much like it. They are vermiculite flakes, used to 'fluff' up the substare to get more air in there for the Hypoaspis. Vermiculite is volcantic ash based and does have a metalic-like shine. The man on the phone was reallyt lovely and as helpful as he could be, but he has no idea if vemiculite is harmful for snails. Either vermiculite is harmful or something unrelated happened to those three achatina in my large tank.... It is a bit of a coincidence but coincidences do happen It was ingested though, I did find it in amongst the poop.
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Post by feebix on Apr 16, 2009 19:51:35 GMT
I had thought about that but thought, well, you`ll know if it was vermiculite ! lol Hmmmm..... I wouldn`t have thought vermiculite to be poisonous to snails? how many actually died in the end? hmmmm...... I`ll have a scout around and see if theres anything I can find out, I`m thinking if it was the vermiculite, we need to know and people should be warned about it, being as vermiculite is something related to keeping things moist, it`s very likely to be used again by some one somewhere.
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Post by feebix on Apr 16, 2009 20:05:44 GMT
I`ve just been having a wee look around and I found this article on snail pesticides and how they are delivered. The article talks about using vermiculite as a carrier for the poison, poison being partially composed of sulphur. I wonder if it`s possible a batch of vermiculite has been mixed up at some point, a bag of poison vermiculite being used as just , well, vermiculite. It`s possible I suppose, I didn`t know that stuff was used to carry snail poison....... www.freepatentsonline.com/4179499.html
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Post by AlienSnail on Apr 16, 2009 22:14:15 GMT
Thanks Feebix, it looks soooo like metal though, I'll send you a flake or two if you like? Well I don't know what's gone on. Perhaps it's not related to the vermiculite at all, and plenty of people including myself have baought hypoaspis from Defenders without problems... Could be a dodgy batch, but perhaps not. It looked like poisoning though. I wouldn't have thought it was anything I gave them to eat as none of the other tanks were affected. Perhaps a virus went round that particular tank and affected just the achatinas in there... I'm confuddled.
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Post by feebix on Apr 16, 2009 23:04:24 GMT
Bad but could have been much much worse eh...... could you photograph it? or yeah, I`ll have a look at some of it.
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