Hi all, I'm new to the forums and fairly new to herps, but I'm very enthusiastic! I apologize because this will be long winded for a newbie.

Anyways, since I bought my Ball as a baby, he has had mites. This was in July. I'm not sure if he had them at the store or if they started after I got them, I will explain this question later, as I'm sure most will say that it's not possible that he got them after. There were very few at the time, and since I really didn't know what I was looking at, I took no notice. Then I did a little research and recognized the problem, began treating it in August.

Not knowing much about Balls at the time, other than basic husbandry, I found it easiest to buy a simple reptile kit, which worked out really well. It came with bedding called "Repti-bark." I'm sure people are familiar with it. Once I identified the problem, I took him off the bedding, cleaned the whole tank, including furniture, treated him, and continued the course of treatment, but never fully able to eradicate them. I had him living on paper towels and treating him regularly until just recently when the problem appeared to be gone. I treated him one last time, monitored him for a few more days checked him THOROUGHLY (we're talking magnifying glass) and seeing nothing for a few days, I decided that it was safe to put him back on bedding.

I placed him back on the same bedding he was on before, but a new bag, and left him be for a while. He has been eating normally since fairly soon after I got him, I had to force feed at the beginning, but after 2 or 3 times, he has been great, eats anytime offered, even with mites. He had one bad shed, when he definitely had mites, but just shed again recently and it was a MUCH better shed, though not perfect, he'd had a retained eye cap and it came off along with the two new ones.

Well I went home today, he is now at my house so that he has constant care while I'm in and out around winter break at school, and looked in his cage and saw that he was INFESTED with mites, clearly visible to the naked eye and HUGE. I treated him IMMEDIATELY and there were hundreds of dead ones, of all sizes, coming off. Keep in mind, he's still pretty young and NOT a big snake by any means. He was handled very recently and showed signs of getting mites again, but not NEARLY to the extent that they appeared within two days, it worries me a lot because I've read that they can severely dehydrate a small snake very quickly and do lasting damage.

This leads me to my questions, thanks for reading this whole thing if anyone did!!!

1. Is it possible that there are mites in the bedding, possibly eggs or larval stages??

2. Do vets have a better, more effective treatment to completely eradicate mites? I've yet to see an exotic vet with him or her, I'm not sure, so I just call it, him so I don't really know. The treatment that I have seems extremely effective, lots of mites fall off dead immediately, but it can't get them all in one treatment, and I'm sure human error is a factor as well.

Thanks so much for any replies, I'd just love some HELP! Thankfully, he is a very tolerant little critter and he doesn't mind the torture that I put him through.