Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was feeding my corn and Taiwan BRS today and I noticed that underneath the latter's bedding were thousands of crawly mites!

They don't seem to be bothering the snake (e.g. there are none on him) but he does seem to be spending as much time as possible off the ground.

So, I'm going to dump the bedding and wash the cage with hot water and soap, and replace it with newspaper for now. Is there anything else I can do to keep the from bugs coming back?

Also, I would stick away from Kaytee's alfalfa pellet bedding. Formerly it was treated with antibiotics and I never had a problem with it. Now it's just rabbit food and apparently it comes with copious bug eggs because no matter how hard I think I can't come up with another place they could have come from. Especially seeing as I live in an upper apartment in the heart of downtown Boston.

We've had a similar problem, and think they must just be aspen mites. They don't seem to hurt the animals at all, but definitely are unpleasant. Maybe try baking the bedding before use? That should effectively kill anything living in it.

Baking the bedding works, but it's much quicker/easier to just keep a $20 can of Provent-A-Mite on hand and lightly spray the bedding down with each cage cleaning & bedding change.

>>We've had a similar problem, and think they must just be aspen mites. They don't seem to hurt the animals at all, but definitely are unpleasant. Maybe try baking the bedding before use? That should effectively kill anything living in it.
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Mike Heinrich,
708-428-5616
Mike@amazontreeboa.org
http://www.amazontreeboa.org

Think I'll let him digest his meal for a few days before doing the change over.

I'm thinking that the infestation is humidity related. I keep his cage significantly more humid than my corn's to help him shed.

Those bugs must have been around for days or weeks before I noticed to be present in such huge numbers. If it was possible, they definitely would have spread to the corn cage, but I checked and there are none.

Also, when the bug bedding got soaked by an overturned water dish, it sprouted mold within a day, whereas the corn has spilled its water tons of times without any mold growing. Maybe this is just a contaminated batch of bedding?

Either way, as long as the snake looks glossy, itch-free and feisty (ridiculously so) I'm not too worried. Just grossed out.

I would be worried about the snakes ingesting that much poison if you sprayed each time you changed the bedding. I know that it is supposed to be dissapated by airing it out, but I would think there would be residue left. Just my opinion.
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phflame
kingsnake.com host

you know, I think the kaytee aspen bedding might have something in it too. What I had seen was as small as mites, and could have been some kind of mite. But, they were not reptile mites at least. They were not on the snake, just all on the aspen. I had never seen these bugs before, but I have seen reptile mites. The bugs that I saw were white, smaller than a reptile mite, and a lot more of them.

I still used the reptile relief on the snake, and totally cleaned out the cage, along with all cages in the vacinity. You can put the animals on news paper until the infestation is gone.
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****Misty****

www.sneakyserpents.com

"Life is Killing Me"

I'll probably dump the enclosure outside somewhere and give it a good soaping and maybe bleaching.

These mites are so small that I thought they were dust that had been displaced by me moving but when I looked closer they were crawling everywhere and pretty fast for their size.

In a quarter sized patch I would say there are 50 of them, which in the whole cage equates to thousands. Thank goodness they don't have an odor!

hey, that is exactly what I had seen in my cage. I was looking at one of my snakes and thought "where did all this dust come from". Then I realized they were moving and there were like millions of them.
Stinkin Aspen.
Now I wanna change substrates again. Nothing seems to be problem free!! Aspen worked the best as far as odor, appearance, the snakes liking it, so on. Now I dont know if its worth the risk of wood mites.
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****Misty****

www.sneakyserpents.com

"Life is Killing Me"