Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello everyone-
I recently started keeping tiny geckos. I've had them for 7 months now. I feed them drosophila. A few days ago I noticed tiny white creatures crawling on the glass, the rim or the aquarium, drosophila containers and surrounding area. I took a closer look and I noticed alot of them. I 'm not sure where they came from; but, I think they came from the drosophila. Well my drosophila stock is heavily infested. I've tried cleaning the tanks with hot water and alcohol solution, but they still show up. I haven't observed any on the geckos. Any advice on how to get rid of these little pests (the mites of course)lol?

I think I've seen those little white mites too, I had some recently in my fruit flies.... I threw the culture away..

I have also seen those turn up in my incubator- on dead eggs... and in the toilet area of one of my leopard gecko tanks...

I'm assuming these are the same things that you saw? White, pin head sized... I think they are scavengers, they eat any dead material they can find.

I have no idea where they spring from though, and I'm not sure there's a good way to get rid of them without throwing out whatever they are in... (when they were in my leos tank, I threw out all the substrate and throroughly cleaned the tank, that got rid of them)..

I'd be interested to know where they come from, they always seem to just appear...

best wishes,
Pauline
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Visit The Gecko Spot (United Kingdom) for gecko information

Most likely, these are grain mites. Although, they infest grain, they also infest other food products, especially if they're moist. I had written about this in one of the KS archives in the past. The main control is cleanliness & low humidity or moisture levels. Below is one of many sites on the subject:
Link