Mites!

[coldbloodaddict]

Nothing wrong with using nix, it's been used for many years as a mite treatment and is just as safe as Provent a Mite.

One bottle per gallon...Wipe the snakes down with it...spray the enclosure and bedding with it.

Don't put the new snakes with your other snakes and you should not get mites on them...If you have already put them with your current collection you need to treat everything!

[MarkS]

Are you sure they have snake mites? Regardless, I generally treat everything new for mites whether I see them or not. If you can get it, Provent-a-mite is a very good product as long as you follow the directions.

I personally use this, you can get it at walmart.
http://www.repel.com/Products-and-So...hing-Gear.aspx

Spray down the inside of the cage and let it dry thouroughly, keep everything in the quarantine cage simple. No cage furniture, easily cleaned plastic hides, newpaper or paper towel substrate etc... Keep them away from your other snakes for at least a month, many people do it for longer. If they've already been in contact with your other snakes then you should treat everything.

[purlaze]

THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO REPLIED!
me and my friend bathed them twice with fresh water, we added some dish soap and seemed to kill a lot, my friend was able to get a couple out that were half under their scales but it looks like there are still some under it. the poor baby snake is in shed and was scared to death but the older girl seemed to love the soak, she stayed still as we picked some out of her scales.


i think i will wait a couple of days and repeat the process of the cage cleaning and bathing the snakes again

as for them being around my other snakes, they haven't. the first thing i did was take them out of their container and do a mite check then right away i moved them to a different room

[NYHC4LIFE8899]

How do you know a snake has mites? What are the signs.? I'm curious

[satomi325]

How do you know a snake has mites? What are the signs.? I'm curious

A sign is that the snake will soak itself for long periods of time trying to relieve itself.
Mites look like black poppy seeds that crawl on your snake and enclosure. Think miniature ticks. Juvenile mites are reddish brown in color too. They can also be seen between scales, in the vent, and in the heat pits too.





Juvenile mites:

[NYHC4LIFE8899]

A sign is that the snake will soak itself for long periods of time trying to relieve itself.
Mites look like black poppy seeds that crawl on your snake and enclosure. Think miniature ticks. Juvenile mites are reddish brown in color too. They can also be seen between scales, in the vent, and in the heat pits too.





Juvenile mites:

Thnx for being so helpful,appreciate it. Yeah man, my snake is all good.

[purlaze]

the mites on my snakes are not nearly as bad as that, that looks horrible!
anyways, so i was handling one of them today and i saw a mite crawling on it's back so there still are some there that were hiding under their scales..can i use a half olive oil and half water solution to soak them in? i heard this suffocates the mites..i'd leave them in the containers for half hour then rinse them with water and dish soap then rinse again with water as well as clean out the containers they live in

i'm just checking cause i heard olive oil will give them scale rot?

[Holtgards]

any oil or oil based products will cause the individual scales to soften and slough off. so I would say no

I had my Normal girl get bit by a mouse and Used neosporin on it and I was dealing with a mess in the tank for the next 3 weeks of the individual scales everywhere

[MarkS]

The only way to get rid of mites is to use poison. The other ways like soaking and covering with oils (which I don't think is good for the snake anyway) is only a temporary measure, it will kill a lot of mites but it won't get them all and then you'll be re-infested over and over and over again. The ONLY way that I know of to eradicate a mite infestation is to use poisons like Provent-a-mite or nix or repel.

[Pythonfriend]

yeah but you are not supposed to use provent a mite on the BP.

so you use the poison to kill all mites in or around the enclosure, and about the ones on the snake, most will drown, some will crawl off the snake and into the enclosure where remaining traces of provent-a-mite kill them, and some parts of the snake will come into direct enough contact to the provent-a-mite residue that mites get killed.

basically you drive down the numbers of the mites on the bp to such a low level that the population just fizzles out. maybe because you get lucky and all female mites or all male mites die out, or you keep killing them before they reach sexual maturity. thats good enough, extinct is extinct. keep killing off the subadult and adult mites and population will sooner or later completely collapse.

i would not use something toxic directly on the snake skin, if you use anything other than extremely diluted soap water, have it be a mild disinfectant that is safe to use on a snake like a diluted betadine solution, not a poison. worst case scenario, when things go wrong with a mild disinfectant, is skin irritation / skin damage. if you use poison on the snake, if things go wrong, worst case is a dead snake. if you follow the instructions of provent-a-mite, the instructions say you are not supposed to use it directly on the snake.

and if the instructions say one thing, which is to not use it directly on the reptile, and someone on a forum says something else, i think the safe thing is to follow the instructions to the letter.