Need help - soap question

A buddy of mine went out of town for a few weeks and left me to look after his BP. He's about 2 years old and is used to being handled/soaking. He was in shed for the past few days so I decided not to bring him to my house until he was clear. He shed today and I noticed he had some black spots on his underbelly. Since I had them with Pandora a few weeks ago, I know what they look like. My friend said he noticed them before and took him to the vet to get it checked out and the vet told him to soak him for half an hour in water with a bit of soap to kill the mites. I've never heard of this, but I'm wondering if it's okay for me to do before I go ahead and soak him. I don't always trust vets...

Ive heard of using a mild dish soap to "suffocate" the mites, but have never used the method myself...so I have no clue ifs a good idea or not :weirdface sorry.

Do you have any PAM? Thats what I would suggest ;)

Yup, I've got PAM for the enclosure which I already sprayed. And I also have "mite off" by zoo med to use on the actual snake. I just need to know if I can soak him to get the mites off first before I put him back in. He's currently in a plastic tupper ware box but I want to be able to bring him home so he doesn't infect Pandora.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pandora

Yup, I've got PAM for the enclosure which I already sprayed. And I also have "mite off" by zoo med to use on the actual snake. I just need to know if I can soak him to get the mites off first before I put him back in. He's currently in a plastic tupper ware box but I want to be able to bring him home so he doesn't infect Pandora.

---

Yes, soaking with a bit of dish soap is alright. As far as I know, but don't use too much. Just a drop is fine.

I would personally, just soak without the soap. Thats just me though.

The purpose of the dish soap is that it decreases the surface tension of the water. This way, mites can't get stuck in little air bubbles and survive. I've heard of people soaking BP's for up to 8 hours, but I'm not sure if that long is necessary. Note, as on Adam Wysocki's soaking video, that it's good to put the tub of water back in the enclosure at least partially on the heat tape. You don't want the snake to get too cold.

JonV

Also a good thing to do is once you completely clean out the cage and soak him, get an 8 in 1 bird protector and stick it on top of its cage. It will help to deter/kill any remaining mites that might want to go back. That way if you don't kill everything you have a head start on treatment again.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by whytepizza

Also a good thing to do is once you completely clean out the cage and soak him, get an 8 in 1 bird protector and stick it on top of its cage. It will help to deter/kill any remaining mites that might want to go back. That way if you don't kill everything you have a head start on treatment again.

---

If you treat with the Provent a Mite, this isn't needed. It sounds like you have things well in hand. You can soak the snake before hand with a drop or two of soap. It won't hurt anything.

Jon was right about the soap breaking the surface tension of the water. A good demonstration of it is to take a bowl and sprinkle it with pepper, then add on drop of soap to the bowl. Once the surface tension is broken by the soap, the pepper is 'pushed' to the edges of the bowl. That concludes todays lessons. ;)

Good luck with getting rid of the mites. May their lives be short and their eggs wither and die. :giggle: