Been Battling Mites For Months!

Hey guys, so I am really tired of mites, I have been battling them for months, literally like 7 months. Time and time again I find myself cleaning out the tubs, spraying down everything and washing everything, spraying down the animals and rack and time and time again the mites always return! It is not a bad outbreak, just a few here and there, but it is so frustrating. I have used natural chemicals (i think thats what its called) and mite off by zoomed. Do i need to cough up the 20 bucks for prevent a mite? am i missing something? I even washed my sheets (that hang near the rack) and vacuum around the rack all the time!

I know some people dislike it, but I swear by the Provent a mite. I had a horrible outbreak in my collection a few months back. A ton of manual labor and 2 treaments with PAM knocked it out completely.

How often are you cleaning out your tubs and cages? The trick with mites is to break the egg laying cycle, which is very short. I bathed snakes and disenfected tubs every day. That may have been over kill, but it worked.

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PAM is good stuff...
I had a bad case of mites after buying a snake at a show several months back. I treated her with natural chemistry spray after bringing her home, but must have missed some mite eggs or something.. 4 weeks later there were so many in her QT tub that she was soaking (it seemed like they appeared overnight). I treated her with the spray again, and put PAM treated paper towels in her tub. I had to spray her and replace the paper towels 2 weeks later with new treated ones (the PAM stays active for 2 weeks). After that, they were gone. (so in total, I treated for 1 month).

I would get the PAM. You only use a tiny amount and it lasts a long time. A couple points though:
1. It only works on substrate that will absorb it (spray it on paper towels or newsprint).
2. It has to completely dry before you put the snake back in and you should not spray with water bowls in the tub (replace them after it has dried).
3. Spray on the carpet around the enclosure and around other enclosures to prevent them from hopping to a new home.

If you are having a continuous problem, you might want to treat all of your enclosures at one time, just in case.

You need to tackle the problem with full force or it will keep coming back. It may take a couple cans of PAM I would suggest removing your animals from the room, hold them over in a PAM treated container for a couple hours. PAM everything! Go through every cage you have make sure you are thorough i cant emphasize enough to get every nook and cranny. I too had a mite problem a couple years back I was fed up with it and decided to do what I explained above and it worked for me have been mite free for 2 years now. I swear by PAM now you can try lice killer but PAM just works better.

Mite off does not work and never has so yeah $20 for PAM would be a smart choice right now especially since you have been dealing with mites for 7 months.

Common sense will tell you that if the treatment does not work after 2 rounds it's probably because the product just does not work.

Mite off might kill the adults but dies nothing to the eggs which means re-infestation every 30 days.


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The main advantage of provent a mite is that it stays in the environment for a very long time. Clean out your cages/tubs and let them dry. Spray on the PAM on the floors, walls, cracks/crevices around the door/rack and allow to thoroughly dry before putting your furniture and substrate back in. This will give you a PAM barrier that should last over a month. This will kill any current mites that you have and more importantly any new mites as they hatch. Do ALL of your snakes/cages like this even the ones that don't appear to be infested.

You could also do the NIX treatment, very similar to pam as far as ingrediants, just you have to make it. In Canada i know breeders that use it every 6 months (just to make sure) there's nothing. PAM here is 45.99$ a Can so a bottle of 10$ nix is very good. and has the permithin or w.e it is called

Both Zoomed Mite Off and Natural Chemistry Reptile Spray will kill mites on contact and are safe to use on the snake, BUT they are not insecticides and they do not persist. They lose their effectiveness once they dry. Since eggs can take anywhere from 2 to 30 days to hatch, your snakes keep getting re-infested.

Provent-A-Mite (PAM) contains the insecticide permethrin at 0.5% strength delivered by aerosol. Permethrin's half-life is about a month, assuming it is not in direct UV light. Once dry it is also safe for your snake.

RID or NIX head lice treatment also contains permethrin, and a 2-oz bottle mixed with a gallon of water has proven effective at killing mites. While a weaker solution than PAM, it is applied more heavily using a spray bottle. It's advantage is that it is cheaper and more readily available than PAM; there's no need to order online and wait for it to arrive.

Whichever permethrin product you decide to use, this thread has excellent how-to instructions for eradicating the little buggers: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...it-with-AaronP

Permethrin doesn't kill mite eggs, but it kills the mites during the off-snake stages in their life cycle. This is why you must replace soiled paper substrate with permethrin-treated paper, and why you should re-treat the enclosure and surrounding area every two weeks for 1-2 months.

Also, any snake in QT should be assumed to have mites and treated as such for at least the first 30 days.

Here's what I did the one time I had a mite outbreak:

1) put everyone on papertowel/newspaper.
2) remove water from tubs
3) spray down each tub with PAM correctly
4) let air dry
5) put snakes back in

You do this and the next day you'll see dead mites everywhere. I also sprayed the rack and slots where the tubs go. Mites need blood to live, so as long as they can't feed off your snakes, anything that is running around will soon die. Do this once a month (some people say once every two weeks but I'm not a fan of chemicals) and it'll be gone in no time.

I had a snake with mites so bad one time that from just holding her your hand would be full of black freckles. After one PAM treatment she was clear.

PAM is SO easy to use!

Take a roll of paper towel. Unroll however many pieces as you have tubs. 20 tubs = 20 sheets of paper towel. Spray it with the PAM and let is dry. Then just put 1 sheet in each tub and in 2 weeks all your mites and eggs will be gone.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rickys_Reptiles

PAM is SO easy to use!

Take a roll of paper towel. Unroll however many pieces as you have tubs. 20 tubs = 20 sheets of paper towel. Spray it with the PAM and let is dry. Then just put 1 sheet in each tub and in 2 weeks all your mites and eggs will be gone.

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WOW helpful Ricky....

There are many respectable people here that swear by PAM.
Natural Chemistry's Reptile Spray works like a champ.
I had a bad infestation once and it is the only thing I use.
I even treat new snake just in case and its nice because you can use it directly on the reptile too.

The big thing is you have to clean the entire area. I am a little OCD and cleaned the whole room with the stuff.
I think I did it once a day for a little less than a week but after the second day I never found another mite.

wow thank you so much everyone! I will be ordering PAM later today and treating with that a couple times and hopefully that should do the trick

I use Pam to prevent further migration

I use natural chemistry's reptile spray. First I spray a separate holding tub with the reptile spray and proceed to put the infected snake in it. I leave the snake in this holding tub for aprrox 20 minutes

I take the infected tub and wash it. I then use a steam cleaner to destroy eggs that are not visible.

I do this every 4 days for 3 cycles and the mites are gone

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jldetres

I then use a steam cleaner to destroy eggs that are not visible.

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Which model? I have some amazon gift cards to use and was considering a steam cleaner, but after reading the reviews, the ones that seem to hold up to regular use are $$$$.

I have the lady bug xl but that's expensive

You can use any as long as the water goes above 212 degrees

Affordable can be the shark steamer.

Using the steamer on tubs without the snake, will definitely kill eggs that mites lay and we cannot see

Why wait 7 months to order PAM? :confusd: That snake is probably SO uncomfortable.
The first (and only) time I've dealt with mites, I got on it pronto. Ordered PAM the same day and until it arrived, I soaked my mojave daily in warm water and a few drops of Dawn and sanitized his tub daily. I also visually inspected him and took as many mites off of him as I could with my hands. I even put a thin coat of oil on him as well to suffocate any mites that were under his scales that I couldn't get to. I could see an instant relief with him and by the time the PAM got to me a few days later, I barely saw any on him or in his tub. He's now my biggest snake, eats like a champ and is such a tame boy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jldetres

I have the lady bug xl but that's expensive

You can use any as long as the water goes above 212 degrees

Affordable can be the shark steamer.

Using the steamer on tubs without the snake, will definitely kill eggs that mites lay and we cannot see

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I'd rather get a decent model, in addition to several adult BP racks + hatchling racks + juvenile racks, I have 4 48" Boamasters and 4 96" Monster enclosures. Then there's the floor, the bathroom, other stuff in the house to clean...

PAM rules !!! I am from Serbia, i order from Pro Products a spray and my friend send me a two bottle of natural chemistry r.s and and that is perfect combination, i was wait on PAM 40 days [emoji13]