Reptile & Amphibian Forums

How is this possible...Only two possible sources of contaminations, either the cypress mulch or the Tegu I got from Agama in October...This is the last time I use cypress mulch as Im pretty sure thats how I got them last time, Back to newspaper only...This really makes me mad as Im leaving for Denver on Monday and will be gone for five days and have a ton to do..I know what Im doing All day tomorrow, I hope my Bluetongue doesnt have them, he's on aspen in another room...
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I do not know your experience level so forgive me if my question is insulting but, are you sure they are mites and not springtails? Springtails are very small and are often mistaken for mites by those not familiar with them. I use aspen shavings for my animals and occasionally get springtails. They feed on organic material so are not uncommon in wood shavings, shed skins and feces. I wonder if cypress mulch does not harbor them on occasion as well. They are not parasitic so allegedly harmless to the animals themselves
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Randy Hallman

Not offended at all..But these were definitely mites.My boa was soaking and they are little reddishblack dots that smear red when squished..I just changed all my cages in the one room, now using newspaper except for my tegu who gets aspen..I just hope it doesnt spread to my other rooms and get my corns and my bluetongue.
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How did you get rid of the mites before? I ask this because i had a
boa with mites that i could not get rid of. Also, i heard that mites go dormant during the summer, so if you do not do a complete
kill of all the mites, they will come back every winter, this happened to my friend's burm

I am thinking maybe I never got completely rid of them this last summer and this is just a reinfestation that had nothing to do with the cypress mulch or the new tegu.
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Your easiest way to combat this problem would be by purchasing a can of Provent-a-Mite from Pro-Products [ www.pro-products.com ]. This product is an acaricide that works by killing mites on substrate and from my own personal experience it will knock out even heavy infestations within a week to two weeks at the most. Also, you can use it to treat other surfaces that mites may have come in contact with or where they might have laid dormant eggs.
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Matt Campbell
25 years herp keeping experience
Full-time zookeeper
Personal collection - 21 snakes (9 genera), 20 lizards (4 genera), 6 chelonians (2 genera)

Prevent-a-mite is the best! buy some and spray every encloser, walls substrate etc. remove animal of course, and water dish spray down its encloser, wait a few minutes for it to settle and then return the animals minus the water dish. wait a day or two then return the water dish. after about a week repeat process and you mites will be gone, i like to spray outside the enclosers as well, ie, if you have a rack system spray down the shelves. Black night is awsome as well but only for spray outside the enclosers, I use to think it was safe to spray the animals since some people out there had me believing it was safe so I would put snakes in a pillow case and spray into the pillow case with the animals inside and ended up either killing them or giving them perminant brain damage. I will never do that again, but if you spray black knight in a corner of the room that the animals as in for just a few seconds it will not only kill every mite in the room, but you will find dead insects and arachnids all over your house. So to kill on a large scale spray black knight but make sure to spray in a corner opposite of the enclosers. Prevent-A-mite is awsome because it has a lasting effect, ie you can spray down news paper let it dry then place the news paper in the animals encloser for substrant and it will still kill all the mites on the animal. and when the eggs hatch they will immdediately die as well even though it was few days since you sprayed. I repeat the process a week later to make sure that the problem is solved and all the mites are long gone.
whenever you get a new animal you should keep it seperate from the rest of your animals, use sprayed down newspaper (prevent-a-mite) for the new animals encloser and after a day if their is no dead mites on the newspaper you know your new animals is clean and can be put in with the rest of your animals.

I don't know if it has any bearing on the mite problem, or the possible solution, but it might.
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phflame
kingsnake.com host