Mites... Confusion.

[JRBrett]

Hi all,

Got a ball python from a rescue 3 weeks ago, she is feeding great and a very friendly girl. I was handling her yesterday and found a mite on my arm. I checked her over and couldn't find any more; checked around eyes, nose, mouth, under chin, belly scales etc. I cleared the substrate (newspaper), cleared the tank and checked her hides for mites. I use old shoe boxes as hides so I took them out and broke apart to try and find the little buggers, I could only find 2 mites in the entire vivarium, no faeces, no eggs, nothing.

I cleaned the viv, hoovered it all (corners etc) and the surrounding room. I have put her on white paper towel and made new hides and given her a new water bowl. I am just really confused how I have had no sign of any for three weeks and then I only find so few mites and no other sign, has anyone else had a similar experience? Any advice on how to move forward with it? Help greatly appreciated.

Cheers

I might add that I don't have any other reptiles so no contamination on my part. I had also bathed her the day before, don't know if that would have any impact on me finding them?

[TheSnakeGuy]

You're on the right track to diagnose a mite infestation. I would just monitor over the next couple weeks and watch for any little reddish dots on the paper towels. Also check the animal everyday.

[jxl]

I have/had similar experience with my new addition. On inspection he looked fine, but after about 10 days I've found small black things under his scales not a lot maybe 3 little specs.

After about another week so let's say 3 weeks I've seen these little bugger crawling over my lil baby.

I went bonkers, threw everything out, bought new box, hides, water bowl and everything. I'm using BioKill on the box itself and surroundings, it's basically the same as NIX solution based on permethrin and water. But it's widely available in all stores.

You should check the thread that was about my snake, and search forum for any other mite threads.
Here's mine: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...with-my-new-BP

What you have done is great, but as far I understand you should use, something to disinfect everything. You can get PAM - Provent-A-Mite which is some sort of a spray based on permethrin again that kills adult mites, eggs and everything in between. Same does the BioKill or NIX solution. Both are also permethrin based.

Hope this helps a bit.

[JRBrett]

Thanks for the quick replies. Will look into getting some anti-mite treatments today.

[Pythonfriend]

properly identify the species. this is incredibly important when you want to treat it right. are you sure that it was a reptile mite, does it match what you see when you search the internet for pictures of reptile mites?

for example, there are free-living 8-legged predatory mites out there, and they wont harm your reptiles but they hunt down springtails and other tiny insects and cut them in pieces and eat them.

biodeversity is high at tiny length scales. when you are in the 1mm range (wolframalpha says thats 0.03937 inches, damn these outdated units that only the USA, Liberia and Myanmar use), basically the amount of possible species is very high, and reptile mites are only one species.


if you identify the species, chances are that the right thing to do is to do absolutely nothing.

[JRBrett]

I am not certain the species of mite, it was however certainly a blood feeding mite. It burst when I squeezed it between my fingernails. Do you know of any resource that help one to properly identify mite species? The mites were small (pin-head size), purplish black and were living in the crevices in the hide.

[jxl]

You're on the right track to diagnose a mite infestation. I would just monitor over the next couple weeks and watch for any little reddish dots on the paper towels. Also check the animal everyday.

Reddish dots?

Well it could be ticks also. So yeah double check !

[JRBrett]

They were certainly black not red, a little larger than many of the photos of red mites I have seen online.

[jxl]

Yeah mine are also black black, but can't really identify what the creatures are :3 i've been treating for mites/ticks. And I don't see any live any more.

[MarkS]

Snake mites start off their life being clear colored, they turn darker and eventually get black as they fill up with blood. The only way to be assured of getting rid of snake mites is to use a poison like Provent-a-mite or one of the other permetherin based poisons. You need to follow directions exactly and don't over do it as you want to kill the mites not your snake.

Some people will recommend various baths or oils or other homeopathic remedies, these remedies do kill a lot of mites but they are generally not very effective over the long term. Unless you have a very light and very recent infestation, you'll have mites over and over again as new generations hatch. Mite eggs are very resistent to poisons and one of the benefits of the permetherin bases poisons is that it stays in the environment long enough to catch and kill new mites as they hatch thus breaking the cycle.