Never Ending Mites

Yep, surrounding area is important to consider...but so is cage decor. :) I used PAM and it really is great stuff. But found that a new bunch of mites still cropped up. I was ready to be mad with PAM until I saw where they were coming from: the driftwood climbing structure in her tank that I stupidly hadn't treated since I thought the wood would hold the PAM wet and hurt my girl. I tossed the wood, treated her tank again, and haven't seen a single mite anywhere since. :)

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Originally Posted by Argentra

Yep, surrounding area is important to consider...but so is cage decor. :) I used PAM and it really is great stuff. But found that a new bunch of mites still cropped up. I was ready to be mad with PAM until I saw where they were coming from: the driftwood climbing structure in her tank that I stupidly hadn't treated since I thought the wood would hold the PAM wet and hurt my girl. I tossed the wood, treated her tank again, and haven't seen a single mite anywhere since. :)

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I wet the log with mite off and put it in the sun for a day and the mites crawled out of the wood and died. There were a lot of them.

I now freeze, boil or microwave anything new that goes in the tank and once a week I do all the stuff that is already in there. I think my mites came from some wood decorations I bought and stupidly just stuck them strait in the viv. Not a mistake I'll be making again.

I had mites come in on a pair of black eastern hognose several years ago, and this method worked for me. Put the animal in a diluted listrine / water soak for roughly 30 minutes. Listrine basically sterilizes the mites. While the snake is soaking, completely sterilize the enclosure. When you take the snake out of the soak, gently towel dry the animal off. Now the fun part. Get some mineral oil (not cooking oil) and coat your hands. Now, give the animal a good rub down. Use a Q tip to get around the head area, especially around the eyes. (this smoothers any remaining bugs and eggs). Place animal back in the enclosure with minimun decorations (water bowl, hide, and paper towel substrate). Repeat in two weeks. Never saw a mite again after that. It is a chemical free way that works. Hoggies are sensative to PAM, so I had to go an alternative route. By the way, I got this method from a vet book.

Oh, if you put a flea collar in your vaccum bag, any mites sucked up will be killed, just be careful using it around your reptiles.