millipedes in my snake plant

I just bought seven 10" snake plants at the home store. I started to repot them and am finding them crawling with tiny millipedes. I bought a few from this same store a few weeks ago and have noticed one plant seems to have them but I've just been picking them off when I find them.

How bad is this? Will they ever crawl out of the pot and around my house? Will they hurt the plant? I could drench the plant in a bucket but given it's a snake plant that seems like way too much water for it.

thx

sigh, i just went digging and found them in plants i've had for a few weeks too. these are also big 10" plants. these i will have to fix or toss---to late to return.

Ok, well what i would do if it was my plant is- take it out the pot and rinse the roots, get all the soil off the roots, get rid of the soil completely, then wash out your pot it was in, and bleach it, make sure all the bleach has completely gone before you repot it :)
That should hopefully get rid of your horrible buys. They will crawl around your house when they mulitply and they will get into your other plants aswell, they live off the dead leaves/roots and stuff from the plant but they have been known to eat nice healthy roots aswell which will obviously kill the plant in time :) Hope i helped a little, Lets us know if you need any more help or get rid of them :)

ah, ok. thanks so much for the information. i'll try that with the ones that are too late to return.

is there any way to check other than digging and looking? now that i've looked i've seen them in two snake plants. i have two dracaenas and an areca palm i bought at the same store. the palm was fresh in the store and still on the palette so i doubt it would have them, but i'm wondering about the dracaena now too. i dug a bit but don't see any.

You should complain to the place you bought them from. I bought soil from a garden centre; I planted loads of plants with it, even gave some away and someone noticed tiny white bugs in them...it was in EVERYTHING in which I'd used the new soil for. They said they'd refund me the soil or give me some more and gave me some "bug" killer.

I agree with skyla_smith about rinsing all the soil off the roots and repotting it in new soil...I've done this before and it seems to work. I'd also maybe buy some bug killer to try and get rid of them, or reduce their numbers at the very least.

I would say digging and looking that way is the best, you could also check the drainage holes if you hhave any as the dead ones seem to make their way there so thats another place to look, if you are that worried you could rinse all your plants roots and replant them all, but i would try and make sure by digging and checking :)

Thanks so much you two. I had the patience and energy to clean out three of the 10" snake plants. Boy is that a lot of work. They lost a lot of the little roots in the process but hopefully they'll make it. I let them dry afterward and then potted them back into some new pots.

Should I go ahead and water them back up again right away or should I wait a bit? I don't know how much (if any) water the absorbed during the cleaning.

I don't know if I'll do any more. I'm digging in the others daily and haven't found any millipedes although I know they bury themselves well sometimes.

I would water them in to their new pots, just because there will be no water in there anyway. I've only ever done it with spider plants and draceana, but when I repotted them I did thoroughly wet the soil again and the continued as normal after that/

Yeah i agree with dipsydoodle you do need to still water the plants you have repotted, drench the soil for the first time then only water when they need it after. Hope there are no more horrible bugs in your other plants, Good Luck :)