Mites, Mites, Mites!!!

[BamaBP]

Well I work in a pet store and we recently got several infested feeder mice from our breeder. (I believe Sun Pet, but dont take my word for it)

Anyways these mice arrived on one of my off days and they were tossed right in with the rest. Needless to say the mites spread everywhere. By the time I returned to work, almost every small animal cage had mites. Knowing that we feed these mice to our snakes, I went to check them out and well what do you know. Everywhere..... Two balls were covered in them, along with a burm, and 2 corns.

I guess you could call me the reptile guy there and I take care of them to the best of my abilities. These snakes and animals are not neglected as in other pet stores. So I bring it to managers attention and we called and filed a complaint against the breeder. All the cages were cleaned out and disinfected. Also every animal had a bath. Being in a pet store I had pretty much anything i needed at my disposal, so I found some mite spray for reptiles and pretty much coated everything.

It's been about a week now and everything still seems mite free thankfully. My question to all of you is that if they return, then obviously i didn't do a good enough job and need to try something different. What else could I do to ensure they don't return?

I did these things for cleaning and disinfecting

• took all substrate out and threw away

• cleaned cages with diluted bleach

• cleaned out any bleach residue with tap water and paper towels

• sprayed the cage down with this brand of PAM that we have (not PAM itself)

• replaced with substrate straight off shelf (I believe its made by Zilla, a green carpet material)

• All snakes received a warm bath and were also sprayed with the mite spray (bottle said to spray directly on animal)

• replaced everything else in cage (hides, vines, etc.)

On a lighter note, Hi all I just introduced myself in the intro forums (only second post).

[Stewart_Reptiles]

Well hello and to our forum!

Mites when you have them can be tough to get rid of which is why quarantine is very important no matter what the animal.

One thing is that mites are species specific so mites found on rodent will feed on rodent and not reptiles and vice versa however reptile mites can hitch hick on rodent, this is a possibility.

Now regardless you do not want annoying bugs on those animals period.

• sprayed the cage down with this brand of PAM that we have (not PAM itself)

Unless you are using PAM (Provent-A-Mite) itself or Black Knight you might do all this work for nothing.

Those two products are the only two with LONG time residual effect which is very important with mites.

My advice get the real thing and treat all the snakes (depending on the infestation it might require more than one treatment.

Other advice treat new incoming snakes and as far as rodent the need is to either find another supplier (in my book mites are UNACCEPTABLE even on rodents) or you will have to preventively treat new incoming rodents as well.