My luck is on a steady decline :(

Newspaper rocks! Clean and easy to clean, no messy substrate all over the floor and no spot cleaning - when the enclosure is clean, it's truly clean!

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Originally Posted by MarkS

Everyone seems to love provent a mite. Personally I hate the stuff. I think it's too strong for what it's needed for. It definatly kills mites, but it kills other stuff too and for a very long time. I've killed mites, crickets, fruitflies, golddust day geckos, leopard geckos and even bullsnakes with it. No, I've never lost any ball pythons with it, but with the other stuff I've killed with it I gotta wonder what the long term effects could be.

And yes, before anyone starts flinging the accusations, I followed the label directions TO THE LETTER.

Personally I'll keep using sevin dust.

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Rough man, sorry to hear it, but two things if you don't mind me saying... The first is, isn't sevin dust a lot more toxic? or did i make that up. Also, for some reason, I don't know why I would make this differentiation, but honestly I would never use PAM around my geckos... yet I use it for my snakes all the time. I have no idea how that makes any sense to me, but it does, maybe just sheer body size, and the fact that geckos lick a lot, I dunno.

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Originally Posted by rabernet

Newspaper rocks! Clean and easy to clean, no messy substrate all over the floor and no spot cleaning - when the enclosure is clean, it's truly clean!

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Ok, I haft to ask.... cause I think it every time I see people that are happy with newspaper, doesn't the ink rub off onto your snakes? I knew a lady that kept a cockatoo on newspaper... below the grate of the cage, the bird never had contact with the paper....and it was always dingy looking. Like grey from the ink. I'm by no means saying it's bad for snakes because I see people post that they are really happy with it. Just curious about the rub off??? I use aspen, and it's a big ol' mess! But I do like the option to "spot clean" between complete changes.

Yes, it can and does rub off on the snake, especially when wet - but there's always unprinted newspaper as an option!

Gotcha! Thanks Robin :sunny: I read about the unprinted and craft paper. I was just mostly curious if snakes didn't pick up the ink, like us silly humans with all these pours in our skin!

I think the can actually has a warning now about not using it around geckos. I don't think it did early on and I did spray some leopard gecko tubs many years ago. However, I've also lost some leopard geckos that weren't sprayed, I just used a tub that had originally held snakes, even though I washed it and scrubbed it before reuse (I figured this one out when the crickets I was feeding them died off as well) . The day geckos weren't sprayed, they were just on the shelf above the tubs that I had sprayed and allowed to dry OUTSIDE of the room. Their fruit fly colonies that were sitting on the shelf next to them died off too.

The bullsnakes I was very surprised about since they were the only snakes I've lost this way. I had 4 hatchling bullsnakes whose tubs I had treated, two of them died and two appeared to develop neurological damage, spinning and twisting in funny ways, most of which disappeared within a couple of months. I think the reason the bullsnakes had it so rough is because baby bullsnakes will hiss and puff themselves up when they feel threatened (which seems to be most of the time) and they probably drew the residual fumes more deeply into their lungs. Bullsnakes also seem to have a higher metabolism then other snakes, so that might have something to do with it too.

As far as using sevin dust, I think the poisons used are similar, (the sevin dust actually says you can use it as a flea and tick powder on your dogs and cats) but the applications are very different. The sevin dust is just a dry dust that is easy to wash out and get rid of when you're done with it. The PAM is an oily spray that seems to last forever. I remember using a pet pal pet carrier once to buy crickets at a pet store. They were all dead by the time I got them home. Then I remembered using that pet carrier as a quaranteen tank that I had used PAM in MONTHS previously. I had washed and rinsed it out, but apparently not good enough because it was still strong enough to kill bugs many months later.

I guess the moral of the story is that any kind of poison is dangerous and different species can react to it in different ways. None of these chemicals should be taken lightly.

Mark

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Ok, I haft to ask.... cause I think it every time I see people that are happy with newspaper, doesn't the ink rub off onto your snakes?

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Yup, it does. Thats why I buy unprinted newspaper rolls from uline

http://www.uline.com/ProductDetail.asp?model=S-2463


Mark

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Originally Posted by MarkS

Yup, it does. Thats why I buy unprinted newspaper rolls from uline

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really? i never knew that.

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Originally Posted by MarkS

I guess the moral of the story is that any kind of poison is dangerous and different species can react to it in different ways. None of these chemicals should be taken lightly.

Mark

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Mark...this is obviously a very difficult subject to talk about, and I'm very sorry for the loss of your animals. It can also be very difficult to give a negative report against a popular product that has worked so well for so many. And I just wanted to thank you for presenting your experiences in such a dispassionate and factual manner.

It's information like this, presented in this manner, that allows people a chance to really learn and make informed choices. For me personally, I'll still choose to use P-A-M...but I'll do so with a lot more caution and mind toward future consequences. I would not have learned that from someone ranting about how much they hate something and expecting everyone who reads it to understand why.

I was gonna say all this in a pos rep comment...but it was a bit too long. ;)

Thank you Judy, a lot of these experiences of mine are from several years ago, and I did continue to use PAM for many years even after losing a number of geckos. I've only had mite infestations twice in my life, but I regularily used the product prophylactically on new additions to my collection that were in quaranteen.

However the bullsnake incident really came as a surprise to me. That was kind of the straw that broke the camels back and it was at that point I decided to go back to using something milder that may not be AS effective on mites, but also hadn't killed any of my animals either.

It's always good to know what other peoples experiences are, both the good and the bad, in order to make a more informed decision for yourself.

Mark