Reptile & Amphibian Forums

The fortress walls of all my cages have finally fallen to invading mites. They are white little things that seem to burrow in the Jungle-Earth bedding I have for all 3 of my snakes. I am wondering if you anybody else has had this problem with Exo-Terra's Jungle-Earth and maybe they are just native bugs to that substrate? Somehow I doubt it, as my retics have been laying in their water bowls a lot lately and my anaconda would not eat anything last week, he is presently under decon level one with newspaper, but I just found tiny white bugs in the substrates of both my pythons. I already decontaminated my conda once before, thinking they were all gone, but with the new substrate, they apparently hatched and festered. It is far too expensive to have to remove nearly 100 quarts of substrate every month, so I did some investigating and if being in the army taught me anything, it's that the best way to kill a tank is with another tank! Aprapos, Predator Mites, specifically, Hypoaspis. Has anyone had any experience with these? Your knowledge is greatly appreciated! I am really thinking about trying them out. Info pages here:

http://www.geocities.com/thearkfiles/mites3.html

http://www.biconet.com/biocontrol/hypoaspis.html

The mites you describe do not sound like parasites looking to infest your snakes.Others have obs the same bugs with the product youre using. If you want to get rid of the mites anyway, I think it would be safer for your snakes to change your substrate.

...sorry I was not entirely clear. I mean that you may want to consider changing your substrate product altogether...ie: newspaper, etc

I had that problem with peat moss for my tarantulas.A minute on high in the microwave will kill anything!! BTW: African black millipedes have colonies of predatory mites living on them.