Please Read! Totally flabbergasted!!

[nixer]

thanks mark it does sound like that is what they probally are and seeing that we are all pretty much in the humid area of the country im sure thats got alot to do with it

[Denial]

I know how you feel. Im having a problem here with gnats from in my water monitors enclosure from the high humidity level

[Vypyrz]

You could always try PAMing them...

[nixer]

You could always try PAMing them...

you cant use pam on rodent food or on rodents, but i do have it sprayed all over my room just in case and i had to really search my food from these little buggers

[Mitch21]

Thanks for all the responses everyone! They've definitely been helpful in calming me down from my initial freakout!


I would really like to salvage the food if possible. It's a 40lb bag of which there's about 30lbs left! So in order to make my mite genocide as efficient as possible, what should I do?

I was thinking:

1. Remove all rats from tubs (I'm not really sure on how to cleanse the rats because I'd imagine there's mites attached to them...)
2. Rinse and lightly bleach all tubs.
3. Set up tubs in a separate area of the basement so the mites can't easily relocate to the new area.
4. Oven bake the 30lbs of food at about 180 degrees??
5. Seal all the freshly baked hog feed in air tight containers and keep them in my room on the second story where air isn't humid...
6. Feed rats small portions in the new area of the basement.

What are everyone's thoughts??? Do you think this would work? Or would this be pissing in the wind?

If I eliminate the food source, would the mites in the current area eventually die off?

[SGExotics]

You should try using one of those heavy duty Vaccums and sucking those things into a whirlwind of hell

[Solinger]

Sounds like it could be the same type of bugs that can develop in brown rice. I have seen them pop up in a completely sealed container in my pantry. It freaked me out the first time too.

From the reading I did about them you can freeze them to death and then supposedly it's completely safe for human consumption. I tossed the rice and bought new.

[Mitch21]

So either way if I bake the food at a high temperature or a throw the bag out and buy something new... What's to keep another colony from arising or from one or two pregnant leftover mites from forming a whole new colony??

[Mitch21]

I'm currently oven cooking the hog feed at 220 for 25 minsk, so we'll see if thus makes a difference. I also bought an air tight container for the baked feed. Hopefully all this will make a difference.

[Mitch21]

Well I ended up cooking it at about 240 for 45 minutes and there were many dead mites... However, there were TONS of alive mites as well...