Something appears to be chomping the leaves from the bottom of my plant

I have six plants close together in an aero setup in the basement.

On only one of them, the new growth at the way bottom of the main stem appears to have had some relatively large bites taken out of it.

The small leaves are in some cases 1/2 gone, and in other cases there are just 1/2-circles ripped into the edges of the leaves.

There are no holes in the middle. Sometimes the marks go to the middle of the leaf, but you can tell it was started at the edge.

The other plants, and all of the leaves above the far bottom, seem completely unaffected.

What causes this sort of damage?

im no expert by far but snails love to eat leaves, and they love basements..

Oh no! I googled for slug and snail damage and the pictures do look somewhat similar. Thanks for the suggestion!

The damage was only there today, so I guess one or more must have crawled up to feed on the plant overnight while it was pitch black down there. I don't see any shiny or slimy trails, but that might not mean anything...

I'm assuming I can't find them because I don't go down there when the light is off--I don't want to mess up my cycle!

Should I just watch it to see if it gets worse, or should I take a proactive approach right away?

Just a note, I've gone ahead and put a shallow container of beer on the floor near the plants--if there are snails or slugs, hopefully they will be attracted and one or more will drown so that I can at least verify the issue.

If need-be, I suppose I can just put a circle of salt or copper wire/mesh around my setup. That should do it, right?

No more leaves chomped on today that I can see, but the container full of beer was dumped over and spilled on the floor.

Maybe it was a really big, angry slug?

I hope it's not something bigger...

bmcclure said:

No more leaves chomped on today that I can see, but the container full of beer was dumped over and spilled on the floor.

Maybe it was a really big, angry slug?

I hope it's not something bigger...

Click to expand...

well i aint buying a slug wud nock over the beer can but fook me its a menace for sure i ope u sort m8, good look

That's my thought too, it was a shallow tin full of beer, and I don't think a slug/snail could knock it over. Would a mouse eat leaves in a similar fashion? What sorts of bigger pests would cause such a little amount of damage to just the lower leaves of a single plant?

Thanks!

my cat loves to eat plants...your basement got any holes anywhere, or do you have a cat?

I believe it's fairly sealed off. Dogs are upstairs with no way down (locked door).

I'll have to make sure there's no way for anything else to get in down there. There's always been a large hole in the wall down there around where a pipe goes out, but I never figured there'd be a way for something to get in there. I'll try to seal that off better and see if it helps.