Quote Originally Posted by JRBrett View Post
Definitely hard bodied and 'feelable'. Took my fingernails to pop, currently at work but will try to upload some photos this evening. I am pretty sure they are snake mites after trawling the forums/ google images etc, but I just confused about how few there were and how little evidence there was in the viv. I do keep a pretty sterile set-up which I guess is good of things like this but I would have expected to see some.

It it okay to remove the for a couple of days hides whilst I am diagnosing? I don't really want to stress her if I can help it but I dont want an infestation.
for mites, when you strip down the enclosure, the minimum is 1 water bowl with fresh water, 1 hide, and paper towels as substrate.

i would recommend you use PAM, provent-a-mite, follow the instructions to the letter. do not use a variety of products, and using any product directly on the reptile will not be necessary, using anything directly on the reptile will only increase risks. mites are difficult to exterminate, but when there are only a few right now, you can definitively hold out for a few days until provent-a-mite arrives.

additional hides and decoration and fake plants can be treated, just spray it with a bit of PAM, and then bag it up airtight in plastic bags and store it away for a month. after a month or two of starvation, dehydration, and toxicity against insects and arachnids, anything remotely resembling any insect or mite will be dead, and you can take it all out of the bag, wash it, and use it safely. so there is no need to throw stuff away, you can cure it.

overdoing it with too much chemicals and combining many different products is more dangerous for your snake than the mites themselves, some people manage to poison and kill their reptiles this way. so keep a cool head and buy the best product and follow the instructions, and even a 10-day-delay is no problem.

(there only is a hurry when someone has a large collection, because mites can bite one reptile, then walk to the next enclosure and bite a different reptile, transmitting diseases while spreading through the collection. with 1 snake this is not an issue.)

and keep in mind that while i now think it may really be reptile mites, we are not sure about that, but it now seems likely. insects with hard shells are bad news.