Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i used baby oil on my snake,,,,i gave a bath after that,,,all mites on him seem dead,,,,his scales are pretty messed up though,,,im gonna wait and see if the mites come back,,,,,if they do

how do i know which insecticide will work cause alot of people suggested insectisides

Did you clean out his cage completely? If not, the mites will be back. But I used the oil/cleaning combo for my first snake and it worked very well.

The only problem that I have with this method is that it may not get all the mites in the enclosure. All it takes is one female that can lay eggs to re-infest. If you have a lot of cage furnishings that may have sand, soil, tree bark, rocks, etc., there are a lot of hiding places that are almost impossible to rid of mite eggs, larvae, psuedonymphs and deutonymphs using non-chemical means.

The insectides and pesticides normally used to treat mites are generally shown to be safe for the animals themselves, but very little is known of the effects on breeding snakes and gravid females with regard to embryo development. It is known that snakes exposed to these chemicals environmentally will show elevated tissue and blood levels of some of the components of the pesticides, but the effects on the snake appear to be of no real consequence as long as the exposure is not prolonged or frequent. No-Pest strips have been shown to cause neurological disorders if the snake is over-exposed, but these symptoms disappear within a few days of removing the strip from the enclosure. Since some of the commonly used pesticides work, in part, by inhibiting reproduction or altering DNA production, the implication is there for them having the ability to cause reproductive problems in snakes, at least theoretically.

For this reason, I always use a spray bottle and a .1% Ivomec solution to mist the cage and animals. It is very effective against mites, not quite so effective against ticks. I try not to expose breeding or gravid females to any chemicals whatsoever. If I were to have a mite problem in a reproducing female, I would use the baby oil/bath method, then place her in a different and freshly decontaminated/disinfected cage with only newspaper for a substrate. Luckily, I haven't had that problem. So far, the only mite problems I've ever encountered were with new animals that were in quarantine.

With mites and ticks, the best cure is prevention. When you have a known mite problem, it is imperative that you wear a short-sleeved shirt and thoroughly wash your hands and arms before you move on to another cage. I even go so far as to change shirts and immediately wash the possibly contaminated shirt with hot water and bleach.