Reptile & Amphibian Forums

So I came home and found these tiny little white spots on my frogs, especially around their ears. And the little white spots were moving. So i assume that they are mites, , and i took my frogs and cleaned them off and put them in quarentine. I was looking for info on this online, and i found that a lot of people who have had problems with mites have been using Reptile-Bark when it happened, which conicidentally is what i had just bought and put in their tank two days ago. I was just wondering if anyone else has had problems with this as a subtrate and if there are any other sugestions for me other than quarentining them, watching them, and bleaching out everything in their tank. Thanks and hope that people take this as cautionary if you use that bedding.

Well, I didn't have mites, but I ended up with some weird wormy things crawling all over my glass. If I had done just a little more research instead of listening to the pet store people, I would have known that the repti bark is not good for white's because they lunge at their food and could swallow some of the bark. Your best bet, clean out your tank, set it up with eco-earth or bed a beast (shredded coconut) and some plants and whatever else you have in there or room for, let it sit for at least a week (clean the water regularily) before placing the frogs back in. The coconut husk is completly digestible, no chances of impaction. Letting it sit for a week or longer before placing the frogs back in lets the environment set in a little, a completly clean and disinfected environment is just as harmful to the frogs as a dirty one.
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I think my frog owns a megaphone....

It is possible that the bark contained some parasite. Maybe mites, maybe something else. The thing to do now would be to disinfect the tank, bowl, and top with hot water and a weak bleach solution, or get some quatracide at LI Herp supply. That will kill anything in the tank. You can probably rinse off the frogs and they will be rid of whatever the little bugs are. Once you clean the tank, put down a layer of paper towels on the bottom, and a clean water bowl and change them every few days. See if the bugs return. If you have any wooden branches, I would throw them out and get new ones in case the bugs got into those.
I don't like the bed a beast for my frogs because they drag it into the water bowl. I use paper towels for my whites. It may not look fancy, but they are always clean.