Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hi,

I have a 3 year old Eastern Box Turtle who is housed in a 50 gallon Rubbermaid tub that I bought from a tractor supply store. It's made of very hard, durable grey platic. We keep the enclosure (filled with organic topsoil, coconut bark chips, moss, and a hidey log purchased from Petco) in our bedroom. We moved 2 weeks ago and my husband and his brother had to lug thiss tub into our new apartment. Well, I saw that Shelly had mites in his enclosure and had mentally noted to change out his substrate but it seems that after the mover there are THOUSANDS of these bugs. I see them drowned in his water, crawling all over him and the enclosure and worst of all, I've noticed a few in our bathroom (next to the bedroom) and on our mattress. Not too many but I HAVE seen them. I think the jostling of the enclosure made them worse or more visible on the surface??

My questions are:

1) Are these bugs biting my baby?

2) Are they leaving a funky sheen on his water?

3) Can they live in carpet or mattresses OR box springs? OR on people? I've had the ITCHIES thinking about these creepy crawlies! They cannot live in your hair, can they?

4) Since it's only been about 2 weeks, will spraying with RID spray in can (mattress and carpet in bedroom), vaccuming solve the problem? I read on KINGSNAKE archives that lice spray will kill them on contact.

5) I plan to clean Shelly's enclosure with bleach and water, bake the soil, wood chips and BOIL the moss before putting it in his tub. I also plan to purchase Prevent a Mite for the future. How long do I leave him out of his tub so the bleach won't hurt him?

I appreciate everyone's help!!!

What you need to do is pretty straight foward.
Take the turtle out of the house for several hours..put it somewhere safe and warm.
Dump ALL of the sunstrate (soil, moss bark etc) in the garbage (might as well do this outside too, not just in a kitchen garbage can)
Bring plastic box to shower, rinse.
Rinse with bleach and then rinse like ten more times. (make sure you get rid of the bleach)
Then spray some insecticide all over the room. "Provent-a-mite" sold at pet shops for snakes actually works very well but its very expensive (20 -30 bucks per can) I am sure there are other mite killers. Don't buy the powder crap that pet stores sell, its useless. I'd spray the floor the bed the and wash the sheets in hot water with lysol.
I have had mite infestations and yes they DO end up all over your house. (i never keep reptiles in any rooms where people eat or sleep anymore and this is one of the reasons)Some mites are parastici on mammals and reptiles so i'd do my best to get rid of them immediately. Wash the turtle carefully in luke warm water. You should be able to rinse many of the mites off. Some may hide under the turtle's scales so you may have to do this a few times....allowing the turtle to dry in betweeen. Do not spray any stuff on the cage. Get new sunstrate. (clean it in micrtowave oven or in conventional oven to kill any eggs or bugs that might be in it) You may have to rehydrate it a few times. And air out the room before you bring the turtle back....better yet, find another room, if you can ,to put him in.

What are my chances that they ahven't gotten throughout the house? Like I said, it's been about 2 weeks that we've even moved in and 1.5 weeks since I've noticed them outside of the enclosure. Should I treat the other bedroom and living area? Also, will they live in clothes? Please respond...I'm totally freaked out.

Thanks!!!

Patty

Before you get all this mite stuff and go crazy with debugging your turtle. Are you sure they are mites. There are these little bugs call sprintails that seem to surface in moist enclosures. They are little black sort of bugs and you can see them alot floating and even sort of skittling accross the the surface of the water bowl in your enclosure. They also will crawl everywhere on the turtle and move fairly fast.

IF this is what you have not to worry. They are harmless (just gross) they will not harm your turtle. Just remove all the substrate clean and rinse every thing and clean off your box turtle. Put in fresh substrate and that will be that. They may reoccur but really they stay near the moist substrate so they won't be infesting your house and they are nothing more than a nuisance to look at.

Hope that's all that you have going on in her tub. I suspect it is.

Steve

Well, some look white and some look grey. The ones I;ve found in the bathroom and on the mattress are grey and very small. As for the water, I've only seen them drowned in it, never skitting across.... What do you think?

Well - Springtails are more dark gray to black and they kinda jump a bit. What you are describing does not sound like them. (plus the fact that you are finding them in places other than the moist substrate of the enclosure.) Personally -- i cannot tell you what the mites look like as I have been fortunate enough not to ever have an infestation of them. Guess you should just go along with the mite protocol anyway just to be safe.

Good luck.

I can speak with some authority on this as I maintain a colony of springtails to feed tiny amphibians. They are very light colored against a dark soil background. As I said above, they may be booklice (Psocids), however.

These are one of two kinds of primitive INSECTS that frequently infest damp vivariums with an organic substrate. They may be springtails, but I have often found them to be Psocids, which are in a different family but similar in appearance. They are called "booklice" (but are not lice) because they feed on anything organic, including the glue in books. Look them up on your browser and go to one of the State University insect pest site for more details and pictures. They are totally harmless and don't thrive in areas that are not moist, so they won't overrun your house. Just letting the substrate dry out completely and taking out the water dish will usually kill them off. This call for help comes up almost weekly on the Amphibian forum and frequently in the turtle forum as of late.

yeah springtails are white. we feed them to plethodontids.
But there are mites which are white, others red and some dark grey to blackish. You can usually make out the distinctive front limbs of the mites which are a bit bigger. Insects lack these as they have only six limbs, arachnids have eight, (this was your point erico?). Its true springtails are harmless but they do multiply and it cant hurt to do a thorough cleaning if you are sure to rinse everything like crazy afterward. The mites do stray considerabley from moist areas. I don't know squat about psocids.

a naive search gets you this:

pics of springtails (harmless)

pics of mites (potentailly problematic)

maybe these pics can help you decude what you have so you can plan a course of action: