Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm just wondering how snakes get mites? When ever I got my burm about a year ago, I ordered her from a breeder, and when she arrived she had mites, I of course, right away bought a brand new thing of black knight, I was told that was always the best way to go. I sprayed her from top to bottom 3 times within a 1 1/2 week(s), Changed her bedding to carpet, I have not had a single mite since then, until now. Well I just changed her bedding back to repti-bark, in fact I just changed all my snakes bedding to that. I'm going to clean it out again today (should I clean all the cages?) spray it down with black knight, along with the snake, and put it some paper towels as her bedding (I would use newspaper, but with white paper towels you can see if the mites are still alive or not) Is that the best solution to do? I'm also just wondering, how the he** do these things just appear out of nowhere!? lol.. I really care about all of my snakes, and I will go all out for them for this, I hate seeing them all irritated and bothered by this crap.... I haven't had any mite problems with any other snake, but I think I will spray them all down just incase a mite got out and into another cage or something.. I would really like as much input as possible on this... Thanx
-Ben

Snake mites will leave their host to lay eggs; this usually means that they travel away from the actual enclosure. Snake mite eggs can stay viable for quite a while under the proper conditions so it is very possible that while you eradicated mites inside the enclosure and on the snake, you are probably getting reinfestations of mites due to their natural behaviors.

Personally, I would go with Pro Products Provent A Mite; MUCH, MUCH better than black knight. If you follow directions you will not have any problems. I generally spray around the cage, around the base boards, etc. just to make sure I didn't miss anyone. Rob

Rob Carmichael, Curator
The Wildlife Discovery Center at Elawa Farm
City of Lake Forest Parks & Recreation (IL)

You probably killed off the original investation of mites a year ago. My guess is that the snakes in the place you got the Repti-Bark have mites, and the mites crawled off their snakes into the Repti-Bark. And your snake got the mites when you brought home the Repti-Bark. If one of your snakes has mites, it's only a matter of time before all your snakes have mites. Good luck.

Paul Hollander

AT the pet store I work at, we no longer use Repti-bark due to finding these little tiny red buggers running all over the place. We have since switched all reps that require high humidity to pure cypress mulch...

So far, we've had no problems.

Yeah, I use the Provent a mite also. I believe I used it twice. Once to rid of the mites and a second time just to make sure. That was about 6 months ago and still not a single mite. I also have a backup, which is that I took some empty yogurt containers and filled them about halfway full of sevin dust and then stuck them under each one of the legs on my stand.