● Keeper guides
Buying botanicals: sterilize before they go in the bin
Leaf litter, cork bark, sphagnum and seed pods can carry mites, mold and predatory springtails. How to treat botanicals before they reach your colonies.
When you're buying botanicals — leaf litter, cork bark, sphagnum, seed pods, anything wild-collected — sterilize them before adding them to your enclosures. Untreated botanicals can carry mites, predatory springtails, mold spores, and other hitchhikers that crash colonies fast.
How keepers treat them
- Bake dry leaf litter and bark at a low oven temperature (around 200°F / 95°C) for 30–45 minutes, watching it the whole time.
- Freeze for a week when baking isn't practical — it kills most arthropods, though not every mold spore.
- Boil or pour boiling water over cork, wood and sphagnum, then dry thoroughly.
Ask sellers about their sterilization process. Reputable sellers usually bake, freeze, or otherwise heat-treat before shipping, but it's worth confirming — and worth a second pass at home if you keep sensitive Cubaris lines or dwarf species.