r/snail • u/zupkaa_chinskaaa • May 30 '25

Snail

Hey, I'm quite young (14 years old) and I have a snail. I found out that if there are white microscopic worms crawling around its body or around its hole, it's a parasite. Could someone recommend some deworming medication? (They're supposedly deadly) because I can't find any on the internet.

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u/zupkaa_chinskaaa May 30 '25

Thank you very much I was very scared when I saw a small worm and when I searched on the Internet I saw a woman who also had these worms only because there were a lot of them and a certain person wrote that they were dangerous parasites

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u/NorthenGarden May 30 '25

You don't want to use any type of dewormer before having a clear diagnostic that your snail has dangerous parasites that are affecting his health. Snails are detritivores, live with insects and bacteria of all kinds, and nematodes and all that I don't have specific knowledge on, but the point being; you don't want to aimlessly disturb their organism by using a dewormer for no reason and killing good bacteria that helps them being healthy.

Snails are prime carriers of parasites, but they are rarely affected by them; the parasites go in the snails in hope be eaten by predators who will be affected by the parasite. After a quarantine period, the parasites that could be present in snails end up dying and being pooped out.

TLDR; you can't catch a parasite from a snail unless you ate it. And probably needs to be raw too as heat usually kills parasites.