ok so its mites....

i posted about a week ago that i thought maybe my bp hate mites and now its confirmed and they all everywhere! dammit! how did this happen?!!! I mean im already getting PAM and going to treat him in one of the spare 15 gallon tanks i have, lined with paper towels, etc etc, but my fustration is how did this happen?

When i got him months ago from a very good breeder he was mite/tick free for months. I never take him outside and i cant understand where these things come from, i mean i have had issues with BPs with mites, but that was one i bought from petland and it CAME with mites, how did this happen?

Maybe it had mites and you didn't see them? Maybe it had mite eggs on it and then they hatched and became noticeable? Maybe you were in another store, or expo, or breeders that had mites and it came home with you on your clothes? There are a number of reasons it could happen.

I'm sorry to hear about the mites, I hope once the PAM arrives the problem will die quickly. Good luck!

She is right, your bp could have had eggs, or you could have picked them up at a show, etc.

Do you buy your supplies from petland? Mites can be on anything you get from the pet store. It's not uncommon for pet stores to be infested with mites considering where they get their stock. I always advise people to put their bedding and whatever else they buy from the pet store for their bps in the freezer overnight to kill any mites/eggs that could be on the items.

Yeah I've also read that mites can come from pet stores. As in, person has a snake with mites, doesn't know it. Goes to the store and touches things (hides, water bowls, etc) and they cling onto those things. You touch them and/or bring them home. You now have eggs/mites in your tank. Mites can cling onto our clothes and feed on us a little until they can get back to the host they prefer.

its definetly not from the breeder, i got my BP may 17 of this year and did not notice anything (and believe me i check) until last week. As far as pet stores i dont buy any supplies from them at all, just mice. Last time i was at a expo was 2 months ago, and i did buy supplies there, but 2 months without me noticing is not likely. The only thing i can think of, is i should have went with my gut instincts when i bought this "drig wood" bark for my tank. I have had bad experiences with bark/mites in the past and just plain dont trust bark. But again, i bought this 2 months ago and its just now mites showing.

I already ordered PAM, what can i do in the meantime? This sucks, its like finding out I AM the one with a disease or something, im gonna be feeling like crap until this is all over with....

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Originally Posted by FrankieCarbone

its definetly not from the breeder, i got my BP may 17 of this year and did not notice anything (and believe me i check) until last week. As far as pet stores i dont buy any supplies from them at all, just mice.

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The one time I had a mite outbreak (with 25 snakes - ugh!), I strongly suspect they hitched a ride home on some feeder mice... I'd just started going to a new shop for mice, and they also sold reptiles at this shop. I asked later if they'd seen any mites around, but of course they said no. They really couldn't have come from anywhere else, and "coincidentally," I never had mites before or after visiting that particular shop. :rolleyes:

That PAM stuff works wonders, though, so hopefully the buggers will be gone soon! Don't dwell too much on HOW they got there, just focus now on killing them dead.

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The only thing i can think of, is i should have went with my gut instincts when i bought this "drig wood" bark for my tank. I have had bad experiences with bark/mites in the past and just plain dont trust bark.

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Bark/wood mites are different from snake mites... so unless the bark had SNAKE mites taking a ride, it's unlikely that's your culprit.

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I already ordered PAM, what can i do in the meantime? This sucks, its like finding out I AM the one with a disease or something, im gonna be feeling like crap until this is all over with....

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Believe me, I understand that feeling! It's pretty awful, but don't worry - the PAM will take care of things, and you'll be over this soon enough. If the snake is really suffering, you can bathe them or get a bottle of Reptile Relief (Natural Chemistry). This won't solve the problem permanently, but does offer some relief from the currently living mites... I used that on the most affected snakes while waiting for my PAM, and it seemed to help a lot.

Reptile Relief (which can be found at most pet stores): http://www.petnsupplies.com/product_...odel=16256-TDG

ill stop over a petland tommorrow and see if i can pick up some reptile relief, in the meantime i got the spare 15 gallon out and ready with paper towel linings, the 2 old rock cave hides from my previous setup and the old UTH/DIMMER setup, hell be living there for a while, i will be cleaning his real setup (the 29g one) twice if not 3 times, before he goes back in, i just cant stop thinking "man he must be suffering having all these things crawling all over him" i really hope PAM is as effective as eveyrbody says, i dont know what i will do if it dosent.....

oh man things are getting worse, i woke up at 6am to find my bp like this. He is going thru great lengths to avoid being in that tank now. That him between the plexi glass and top

Have to go to work, after which im going to every damn pet store i have to to find some reptile relief....


http://www.imagebam.com/image/ed5781154565034

I really suggest taking all those decorations and everything out, cleaning the tank like crazy, and then replacing with paper towel and only putting back the hides and a water dish. I'm sure you said you bought a tub for him, but this should be done asap. Bake anything wood and bleach the rest. Give this guy some soaks throughout the day, poor thing :(

You have too much stuff in that tank with a mite outbreak. You need to strip the tank bare. Take all decorations and either boil em or submerse them in water for a couple hours, strip and bag and throw all the substrate. I would order a can of provent a mite to have on hand. Reptile relief doesnt hold a candle to pprovent a mite. I wouldnt have anything in that tank except paper towels. Mites can come home from the pet store on rodents. I have seen it happen too many time. Picture this, pet store has a mite outbreak and the kid handling the snakes also handles the rodents. Theres your link. Mites are not just specific to reptiles.

keep in mind if you soak him put a few drops of a mild hand soap in the water with him. and I would start that ASAP. Also as others said clear out that tank of junk and keep him just on paper towels. And get that reptile relief ASAP!

Should get you by until the P.A.M. gets there.

ok here is a update, i came home last night, read the suggestions, so have his old 15 gallon tank set up for him

http://www.imagebam.com/image/ac18c6154733654

i was going to take him out of his current setup yesterday, but i could;t because the old setup i have for him to be in until the pam arrives is hooked up with a UTH with a dimmer, the herpstat is in the infested setup up, so i had to tinker with the dimmer all night and waited until morning to make sure it was kosher, and i got the temps with the UTH at a steady 85-88 so says my pe-2 temp gun.

Here he is right now in a bath, i did check the temps of the water too before putting him in and a sprayed a little reptile relief in the water as well. Im gonna leave him in there another half hour (?) then i will place him in the new tank. Later on when he is dry i will spray him down a bit more with reptile relief.

The only bad news is i just got a email last night, and the PAM wont arrive until next week since its ground shipping. So i guess hell be in his temp tank for a bit. In the meantime im not even going to bother with the other tank, petland has a sale 1 dollar a gallon, so im buying a whole new tank. Now im wondering how i will go about cleaning the decor and dishes/hides?? as of right now everything is the way it was, except i emptied out the water dish, i was thinking of buying some lice bedding spay and spray it down right now to kill any mites that are in there, then after that probably next week since i strapped for time, soak everything in a boiling hot water/bleach solution for an hour, then letting it dry...??

here he is soaking...

http://www.imagebam.com/image/f5d080154733665

ok so after 2 weeks of having him in a quarantine tank until the PAM arrived, i noticed something, i was soaking him in a bath everyday, and sparying him with reptile relief, and lined the tank with paper towels, yet, i saw no mites or ticks or anything whats so ever on him or on the paper towels. So i did a little research and came across "wood mites" Well i started to analyze his tank (which has been left untouched) and looks thru it all and saw nothing crawling around, until i took out the bark log i had in there, IT was infested with these small white termite looking things, these are the ones i pretty much saw on my BP initially. So now im thinking, he did;t have mites, just there was wood mites in the enclosure. Well moving fowards, i cleaned out the tank yesterday with bleach and water, then after that dawn and water, i boiled all the hides, water dish and decor. THRU AWAY the bark log, and after everything dried out, i sprayed the empty tank with pam, let it dry, re introduced new bedding and the newly cleaned decor/hides, sprayed that down with pam, let it dry, did a final bath to my BP followed by a spray down of reptile relief, let it dry out then re introduced him into his enclosure again. He is doing the usually, exploring around etc etc, but not a sign of mites or wood mites at all.

Im just a little worried that he is doing too much exploring, even during the day, i mean he speant most of the night in his hide but right now he is doing more exploring, is he just getting re adjusted to his "new" setup again? i mean would;t he remember his own home, nothing has changed except for that bark log that is gone.

Also he hasent fed in like 3 weeks, im gonna give him another week to get "adjusted" to the enclosure before i try again, either a week or until hes always hiding like before.

Am doing this right?

I am just going to say to be very careful when soaking your snake with that much water in the container. You only need the water as high as his body or less, or don't walk away and leave him.
I understand that is a small container and he most likely has no problems keeping his head up, and probably nothing would happen, but.

At the reptile store I worked at, a well known customer came in and the owner let her soak her snake in the back. She put in way too much water and the boa drowned.

Another customer drowned her baby cornsnake after the owner advised her over the phone to soak it.

When working there, we no longer advise people to soak their animal, instead put them in a wet pillow case.

That picture just makes me nervous.

ohhh nooo, i kept him in that container right next to me, and i took a look in there every 5 minutes if not less to make sure his head was above the water, also, no more soakings anyway, he is mite free for the moment, im just worried about the exploring part....

It will take a few days for your snake to get re-adjusted. Anytime you clean a tank, it smells different to them, so it might as well be a new enclosure.
Something that I learned about mites from some research that I did a while back, is that they will lay eggs outside of the tanks. The eggs can also lay dormant for some time until specific environmental conditions are present and then they will hatch.
I treat all of my enclosures every other month with Provent-A-Mite as a preventative treatment against any outbreaks... :gj:

yeh i read up on that somewhere, and i intend on once a month spray down my enclosure with PAM, aswell as the surrounding areas, i never want to see another mite ever again.