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While removing excess baby food from my crested gecko enclosures and my white line enclosures I noticed a ton of little flea looking bugs. They were various sizes (all pretty small), a brownish color, and were capable of jumping. I have been using a soil substrate made up of peat moss, orchid bark, moss, coconut husk, and potting soil. I use live pothos and lots of cork bark. I have never noticed these bugs before, with the tanks being set up for a couple months now. Does anyone know what these might be? They do not look like the normal mites, as they seem to have less legs. I really think they are fleas of some kind. I threw away the enclosures with substrate and all and placed the geckos in large rubbermaid bins with home made screen tops. Do these bugs pose a threat to my geckos and will they spread to other tanks. One last question. Do the other gecko lovers out there prefer natural set ups or sterile paper towel type? Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Might they have been fruit flies? These get into houses very easily and would be attracted to the baby food. They're pretty much harmless to a healthy animal.. might even be a good snack. I guess the only way to identify fruit flies is that.. they fly, but it can be hard to get them to fly very far. They're quite tiny. If you have good vision you can see that they have red fly eyes.
If not than I can't think what they might be. If they're not mites they're probably nothing to worry about.

Thank you, but I have Dart Frogs, so I am familiar with the various kinds of fruit flies. Unfortunately, they are everywhere. These things look nothing like flies.

I have had them in my Uroplatus enclosure as well.
They seem to be harmless for the most part EXCEPT when my female laid eggs and I discovered the mites attacking the eggs.

The eggs were pretty much destroyed.

-Matt
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I would be willing to bet that they were some sort of wood/soil/plant mite. I have them in almost every natural tank I have set up. They are harmless to the reptiles as they don't feed on the animal's blood, they feed on organic plant matter.
As for your question about natural vs paper towels...to me it depends on why you're keeping the animals. When I was primarily breeding...I used all paper towel containers for ease of cleaning and sanitation. Now that I keep small groups of homopholis, chondrodactylus, etc. I use all natural planted tanks. I love the way the look and the animals are thriving and still producing eggs for me. To me a natural tank makes for a better environment for "pet" animals. However, I have nothing at all against sweater box setups for large scale breeding of animals...like I said..it depends on why you're keeping the animals.

Chris

np

You say just harmless wood mites. Can they cause a problem in large numbers? Will they spread to other enclosures? Thanks for your time.

I've had small, whitish soil/wood mites in some of my more natural terrariums for almost 9 years, I've never had a problem with them.

I'm not sure if they can migrate to other terrariums, the ones I had seemed to like the warm, moist soil of the anole and gecko enclosures I had them in. But, when I transferred a plant from one terrarium to another, the mites were transferred, too, but I doubt they would "travel" on their own.
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Christina Miller
Herptiles.org

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1.0 Iguana iguana - Draco
1.0 Anolis carolinensis - Duke
0.1 Eublepharis macularis - Ocelot
1.0 Cosymbotus platyurus - Baron
1.0 Cynops orientalis - Hyper
1.0 Leiocephalus schreibersi - Turbo

I have them in my Goniurosaurus set-ups. They are common in high humidity set-ups with wood substrates (orchid bark, cypress mulch, etc.). I have them in a couple of my incubators as well. They will not bother viable eggs but love to munch on infertile and/or rotting eggs. They are really nothing to worry about. I used to sterilize all of my substrates to remove unwanted pests, but it is really not necessary.

Nathan Hall
GECKOS UNLIMITED