Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Well first off, I hate mites. This is my first experience with them. Of my four tanks, two have been discovered to have mites in them. Both snakes have been removed, sprayed with Reptile Relief, and are in sweater boxes on the other side of the house. Today I picked the mites out of one snake's eyes (the only one that has them there). I treated this snake before, thought all was well, but found out otherwise now, 3 or 4 weeks after the first ordeal. I figured this is probably the way the mites came back in the first place since you can't spray any mite treatment in their eyes. So for now they are being quarantined and the other two tanks with the unaffected (hopefully) snakes will be cleaned tomorrow and the snakes with get a spray of Reptile Relief. I sprinkled Sevin Dust around the tanks.

My questions:

Is the best way to get mites out from the eyes to just manually pick them out?

Does it sound like I'm on the right track, any other suggestions?

Thanks a bunch.

darn near impossible to erradicate without treating the area. Reptile relief will work great form killing off moe=st on the snake but like you've found cannot or should not be used around head so there is an "island" for the nasty little things to survive on. Good thing is they cannot reproduce on the host, must leave to lay there eggs elsewhere. Get some Provent-a-mite and spray the surrounding area including bedding. BTW, switch over to paper towels for the short term. Alos spray around the cages and any wooden items, racks, shelves etc as they like to le=ay their eggs in cracks and crevices in wooden items. Follow directions carefully and while spraying, remove the snakes. If yoiu need to change out the paper towels, don't forget to treat the new ones.
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
24.36 BRB
19.19 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

I agree 100% with Dave -

- Get some Provent-A-Mite (yes, it is expensive, but worth it).
- Use it as instructed
- Don't waste money and time on other "remedies", they don't work

Provent-a-Mite works first time, everytime. You should do the followup treatment as instructed, but frankly the stuff is so effective you really don't need it.
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

Just a third recommendation for Provent-a-Mite.

Reptile-Relief kills adult mites on contact but does nothing to the mites that hatch out and re-infest. Also, RR will not kill adult mites in the cage that were not in contact with the product.

Provent-a-Mite kills them all. Use as directed though. Don't spray the snake. Put the substrate back in after the cage floor has dried. Then your snake is very safe and the mites will die off.
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Mark