no pest strip question

Ok so I'm fighting mites now for a few weeks with some sprays and stuff from the pet store. I did as everyone here says to do. Took out the substrate, cleaned everything and so on. Anyway, none of that worked so now I'm trying the pest strips. I want to try to make sure the room they are in is free'd of them so I left the strip whole and hung the strip in the room a few feet from the enclosure. I did this about 12 hours ago and just went to check on things but still see moving, alive mites on my snake. How long should I expect things to take doing it this way? I would just cut a piece off of the strip and put it and the snake in a small tub but ultimately the problem is still in the room and the process will just repeat itself. Maybe I'll end up doing that too but the answer I need is in regards to my current method please......Thanks in advance.

I can't offer advice on a strip. But if you have prevent a mite and treat the enclosure, they will no longer be able to feed off your snake, and will die without a host.

As Doolittle said I too have never tried strips so I don't know how affective they are. But I've become pretty good at eradicating mites. I have two tanks a 20 gallon and a 40 gallon so this process is a lot harder than with a tub. I throw all the bedding in my compost pile, then I take the tank (tub in your case) outside and spray it down really really good on Jet lol so I blast the crap out of the tank. Then I wash the enclosure with a lot of bleach and hot water and fill it up to the brim and just leave it outside full of water for an hour (idk if the mites drown but it can't hurt to try lol.) then I dump all that water out outside blast the crap out of it again with the Jet stream on the hose, wipe the tank down and let it dry/air out from the bleach smell. Then I bring the enclosure inside and treat with provent a mite spray, and then treat the infected snake with Reptile Relief spray. I let the snake sit with spray on him for 5-10 minutes then clean him up. After I've spent an entire doing all that treatment I never see another mite. Lol it's a lot of work with my 40 gallon tank because I'm a small girl and it's pretty heavy but after all the hard work the mites are all gone. Should be a lot easier with tubs though! :) you can give this a try if you want. It never hurts to try.


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What did you use?

I have only had mites once. Came on three bloods I ordered. Not wanting to wait for PAM I tried Reptile Spray from Petco. I cleaned the tubs, bowls, hides, and snakes with it. Killed them the first shot. I also sprayed the floor directly around their area and then vacuumed.

I have never tried any strips either. It sounds like something got missed in the cleaning process.

I may end up treating for them that way. I just don't have provent a mite locally available to me so I was trying to use something I could just go to the store to get. I have read lots of positive results from the strips but most of them involve basically fumigating a small tub, with the snake inside, with a small piece of the strip. I have read one or two threads on using the strip as a room wide preventative measure so I'm hoping that I will get some effect out of doing something similar. I do like the bleach idea though, it doesn't hurt to be extra safe.

Reptile Spray is the product name, its not PAM. Petco sells it for about $8 a bottle.

http://m.petco.com/product/109610/Na...ile-Spray.aspx

I dont remember the name of the stuff I used but all said I finished it off and no longer have the bottle. I then tried a natural enzyme spray. It is labeled as a cleaning product but the company I bought it from told me it worked for mites as well and when I looked online people use it for bedbugs and stuff like that too. I probably didn't give that a fair chance but I didn't think much of it.

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Originally Posted by KMG

What did you use?

I have only had mites once. Came on three bloods I ordered. Not wanting to wait for PAM I tried Reptile Spray from Petco. I cleaned the tubs, bowls, hides, and snakes with it. Killed them the first shot. I also sprayed the floor directly around their area and then vacuumed.

I have never tried any strips either. It sounds like something got missed in the cleaning process.

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Oddly enough, you're the first person I've ever seen mention spraying the carpet and vacuuming up the little corpses. That's actually a great idea.
I've never used PAM or Reptile Spray, but I have used Mite Off and Frontline Spray. Frontline worked REALLY well, and can be used on the animal and the tank. Mite Off works great for killing ants.

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Be careful with the no-pest strip, I've had a snake killed that way in the past. You're probably safe hanging it in the room as long as it's a big enough room, but putting it in the enclosure can be dangerous. Back in the old days it was actually recommended to put a 1 inch square of no pest stripe in the snakes enclosure but there are much safer alternatives out there now. Provent-a-mite works very very well if you follow the directions but even that can be dangerous if not used correctly.

Yeah I have no intentions of putting any of the strip in the enclosure. As for the frontline....is it safe to the point I can just spray the snake and enclosure and be done with it or do I need to make sure to clean up after spraying, for example can I just open the enclosure and start spraying with the snake still in it and leave it at that or do I have to spray and let it air out kinda thing?