Hi guys. Last night while cleaning tubs, I got a very unhappy surprise... One of the snakes I got in July apparently has mites. I put reptile chemistry spray on him, put dried treated PAM newspaper down in his tub, etc. But the situation is confusing to me, so I wanted your feedback on what I think might have happened.
The snake in question, my hypo male bci, and a female cinni BP were both purchased at the July repticon in Atlanta. They were both placed in quarantine in tubs with treated PAM paper towels and wiped down with reptile chemistry spray upon arriving.
I kept them on treated paper towels for over a month and saw no signs of mites. They stayed in quarantine for another month with the same setup. Their tubs included 2 RBI hides, water bowl, and at first, pieces of wood, but one of those pieces was removed after the first week due to lack of room in the BPs tub. They have been in the reptile room for about 1 month now with no signs of mites and the same setups they had. I recently upgraded the boa to a larger tub and put in the larger piece of wood that was formerly in the BPs tub (that was about 2 weeks ago).
Last night I noticed that the boa had spilled water in his tub, so when changing out his substrate and bowl, saw mites in the water dish.. Many mites (maybe 15 or so).
My question is this... Is it possible that the BP originally did have mites and the piece of wood removed from her tub about 1 week into treatment harbored mite eggs for this amount of time; then upon reintroducing the wood into the boa's tub, hatched and infected him?
This is the only theory I could come up with as to what happened... None of the other snakes' tubs have shown signs of mites (none in water bowl or crawling around that I can see), so I'm hoping that treating all of their paper towels will stop the spread of them at this point... I also sprayed the offending piece of wood, so hopefully this won't happen again.
I greatly appreciate any feedback you can give me on this scenario.. Just when I think I have the quarantine process down, something like this happens.
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