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Grain Mites! Help!!!
I am trying to breed my own feeder rodents and insects. I work in a pet store and I brought some rodent block dust (the kind you find a the bottom of the bag) to feed to my crickets and other insects. Little did I know, the dust was infested with grain mites. I threw out my entire mealworm colony and my entire dubia colony. Thankfully they were still small and I didn't lose much. I was able to save my super worms and moved them to another room. I haven't seen grain mites on them since but I will check again today.
I recently bought another starter of mealworms and a dubia starter and I haven't set them up yet (got the dubia today). I went in to do a thorough clean of the reptile room (where we keep rodents and reptiles) just now and found half the room is infested! The closet where we kept the insects previously and the rodent racks are all covered. They cover the water bowls and tanks of my two leopard geckos and cover the water bottles of my rodents and all the wood is covered. We checked their container of food and we didn't see any mites anywhere. It was kept on the other side of the room. We've removed the food and we are starting to remove tanks and bottles to wash them thoroughly with hot water and soap. I'm going to wipe down every surface but I really don't know what to do. I thought they were gone when we removed the insects and infected grain. Their current food isn't the source but they've infested the rat racks and mouse cages. I just really don't know how to get rid of these.
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Anyone? I'm still washing but its hard to clean the glass tanks as the mites have gotten into the crevices and after washing, I find mites crawling around on it as its drying.
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Re: Grain Mites! Help!!!
We sometimes find mites / insects in porridge bought from supermarkets ..
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Ok, that doesn't help me. Sorry, but I'm trying to get advice on how to get rid of them. I just checked a tank I washed last night and it was crawling with mites again. And I found a mite crawling on the rim of the rat food tub. This is driving me crazy. I can't stand these mites being in the house.
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I don't think grain mites are going to cause any problems for your rodents. The population should control itself if you've removed access to food. I get them from time to time in my rat food. There is no way I know of to not get them sometimes in the food. Bugs and grain go hand in hand.
I may not be very smart, but what if I am?
Stinky says, "Women should be obscene but not heard." Stinky is one smart man.
www.humanewatch.org
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Don't feed grains or grain products to your Dubia's. I've had my colonies going for over 5 years on just fruit and vegetable scraps, don't overfeed fruit and veggies or you could have problems with fruit flies instead. As far as the meal worms, I've had grain mite outbreaks in my meal worm colonies from time to time, usually when it gets too humid in the culture. It's gross but not really a problem and they go away eventually. Virtually every grain product contains a few grain mites, problems occur when the mites who are staying in a rich food source suddenly experience ideal temperature and humidity levels. Then population explosions occur and that's where the yuck factor comes in. Another good idea is to spray down some sheets of newspaper with permethrin spray, allow it to dry thoroughly and place your culture contains on top of this paper, any bug walking across this paper to get to your cultures will die and any bugs escaping from your cultures will also die.
Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus
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