Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just went down into the snake room tonight to check on them and noticed some tiny white, what look to be, mites all over a couple of the cages. They are very small in size. They almost look like dust specs, except they move. I kind of looked over the snakes and they don't seem to be crawling over them. They are definately all over the cage though.

I use Aspen bedding in my snake cages and it looks like they are all over the bedding. They don't seem to be in all of the cages, but they do seem to be in a few.

What do I have????

What can I do about it???

Thanks

These mites are not black, they are white. As I said, I didn't see many near or around my snakes head. I will have to look better later.

Thanks.

Get some pest strips from WalMart
Cut'em in 2" strips
Remove all "water containers" and scatter them top to bottom throughout the room.Leave'em set for a few days and your woodmite issue will be resolved. Replace water for animals after removeing strip/pieces. Put them in a ziplock for later use.

Repeat above after 10 days to catch any eggs that may have cycled thru.

"Do Not Allow Direct Animal Contact with the strips "

M/

>>These mites are not black, they are white. As I said, I didn't see many near or around my snakes head. I will have to look better later.
>>
>>Thanks.

Well, here is what I did.

I removed all of the snakes from their cages. Then I removed all of the Aspen shavings from every cage and then cleaned the cages. Then I sprayed all of the cages with Nix solution (dissolved in water 1 parts to 60). I also lightly sprayed the snakes.

I waited for the Nix solution to dry and then I put newspaper in all of the cages and returned the snakes. I will replace the water in all the cages tomorrow.

Hopefully this solves my mite problem.

But, I never want to have to deal with all that Aspen bedding again. So, I'm looking for new liner solutions.

Anyone have any ideas?

I'd like to know what they are as well. I have ball pythons that I used to keep on Aspen until I saw these white bugs. I replaced the aspen with paper towels and cleaned the rubbermaids with provent-o-mite. This seemed to do the trick and I was planning on going back to the aspen but I haven't seen any more bugs since I went to paper towels. These bugs don't seem to match the description of mites..............but I could be wrong.
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Jon F