Posted by:
laurarfl
at Sat Apr 5 10:50:07 2008 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by laurarfl ]
My Burm had mites when I got him, but not as bad as yours sounds. This is what I did to treat them and they were gone pretty quickly.
1)Purchase either a can of Provent-A-Mite spray or Equate Lice Bedding Spray from Wal-Mart's pharmacy section. I'm not going to get into the differences here, but some prefer PAM to Equate, but Equate is cheaper. There's a thread on another page about these two chemicals.
2)Take everything out of the cage.
3)Follow the directions VERY carefully and spray the enclosure inside and out. You just need a light mist, don't saturate, and hold it the recommended distance away. Also spray all of the newspaper that will go into the cage. I would use newspaper until the mite problem is gone.
4)Clean the water dish with a 10% bleach solution. Make sure you rinse everything so that no bleach odor remains.
5)When you put everything back together, make sure that everything is dry and that no lingering odors are present that could indicate residual chemicals. Also, as a precaution, I would wait and put the water bowl in the next day to make sure a wet animal didn't reactivate any chemicals. Likewise, I wouldn't mist for a day or two.
Mites will crawl out of the cage, so I always spray about a 2ft area around the cage as well, whether it be my carpeted floor, a table stand, etc. The chemicals are safe when dry, but toxic when freshly wet. Do not spray them on the snake or let him into a wet cage.
In the meantime, you can continue with diluted Betadine soaks (weak tea) or soaking in water with a drop or two of soap added. Reptile Relief didn't work that great for me, and I've never tried Nix. When I needed to get rid of mites, I used newspaper as the substrate and even sprayed the newspaper at every change. I did this for about three weeks, and was able to completely get rid of the mites after the next shed.
Everyone has a slightly different way of treating mites, so you might find different opinions and methods here.
[ Hide Replies ]
- Help MITES - Jbuggs500, Fri Apr 4 18:25:31 2008
 RE: Help MITES - laurarfl, Sat Apr 5 10:50:07 2008- PROVENT-A-MITE.... - Carmichael, Thu Apr 10 22:09:14 2008
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