no pest strip question

[Neal]

Honestly all that stuff can work but it's not what it's designed for.

PAM(Provent-a-Mite) creates a barrier for the mites and once dry it's still effective at killing mites. The harmful thing about PAM is the fumes. If you use as directed after about 15 minutes the fumes are gone and it's dry. You could open a window with a fan to help with the fumes. This barrier lasts for at least 30 days, but longer than that some people say, but if I were fighting mites I'd treat once a month for three months, to be safe. Once it's dry it's no longer harmful to the snake so you can put the snake back in the tub. What I do is I spray a cloth and I rub the lips of the tubs and the base of the tubs. Then the animal in quarantine I wipe all around the outside and openings of the tub/tank and spray the bedding without the water bowl. You can put the water bowl back because once PAM is dry it's no longer a risk to your animal.

Now the Reptile Relief/Reptile Spray can be used on the animal because it works different. Once dry this apparently loses it's effectiveness as well. What it does is it eats away at the mites shell and then salt or something else in it dries it up. This works great IF you get all the mites. You aren't supposed to spray this around the head but you can spray on the body of the snake and I'll usually rub the snake down a few times with a sprayed paper towel to try to work it in and under the scales. I'll sometimes use a cute tip for under the head where the bottom of the jaw where they like to hide as well. Then after letting them soak with that stuff for about 15-20 minutes I'll rinse the snake off really well and then I'll put a tub of water with a top on and I'll put the snake in the tub. The snake usually figures out that soaking helps with the mites so within a few minutes they stop slithering all over. My PL that is in QT because he had mites from a breeder at the show even learned that submerging fully helped as well. Then after about 15-20 minutes of soaking I'll dry them off with a towel and then I'll get something slightly stiff but thin like a torn piece of a magazine and fold it once and I'll look backwards under the scales of the snake and I'll gently swipe the mites out and kill them if they're not already dead. My PL also learned that when I put his head upside down I'm doing just that so he's making it a lot easier on me than I've had to deal with other new snakes. That along with the PAM in the enclosure and all around openings will help you resolve this issue.

The reason I say about preventative treatment is because even being in a different room, mites can still crawl, something around 11 inches per minute if I'm not mistaken so while you may of treated your snake a mite or two may of gotten away and heading towards your new collection. So the preventative step makes sure you don't end up with mites in a few weeks again.

EDIT:
So while RID and that other stuff might work, it's meant for lice, not for snake mites. Yes, it has Permethrin in it, but that's a wide term. If I say the term soap, I could be talking about Ivory bar soap or soap that you wash your clothes with(Detergent). The fact is they're both considered Soap and while Permethrin has a lot of diff aspects of it, some are safer for your snake and some aren't. So do it the right way if you're going to do it.

BTW, no offense to you RID guys.