Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Theres some mites crawling around in my iguanas cage and ive found one or 2 on him every once in a while in the past, recently i turned over a rock and found probly 8 or 10 of them crawling around and killed them. After inspecting the iguana himself, i found no moveing mites but tons of small orange flecks around the bumps on his neck, the scales on his head, and on the upper arm (not in any skin folds thoguh, where ive read that mites usualy chill). Also ive noticed that the coloeration under his scales seems to be very bright red on the upper tale, jaw, and body; yet this is under the green scales and in perfectly stright lines. How can i get rid of the mites??? Are the orange flecks that dont move or the red under coleration of the scales mites??? if anyone has answeres please reply.....

first i have to say that if you see one, there ARE a thousand. and i say this because if you look closely in any cracks or holes in any cage furniture(especially driftwood) you will prolly see thousands of tiny eggs. the orange flecks are probably mites but you didnt attach a pic so i wont say they are. first you will want to bath your ig, for a while. remove everything from the cage and bake what you can and use water/bleach solution on everything (i part bleach to 10 parts water) discard any substrate, far away from any herps or where they can come back. wash out the enclosure very very well also. if you havent noticed, the goal here is to get rid of all of them because if you miss one, or an egg or anything, they can and WILL come back. i have had my share of mite infestations and i can vouch for the havoc they can reak on your animals. anyway, make sure you get them all off your ig. i have heard prevent-o-mite works wonders but i have never used it. the last thing i do is take a tupperware type butter container and poke lots of holes in it and put a one of those sticky pest strips in it. just make sure your ig cant get to it. if you can i would suggest taking him/her to the vet to make sure that there arent any internal parasites. the one rescue i took in had a severe mite outbreak and even when i got that in control, after a week he became so sick he died, despite everything i did, because in the beginning i assumed that there were only mites on the outside. sorry for the long post, hope it helps.
~icy
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"it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt"
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