Well I have a new strategy for cleaning my rack. Once a day I go through each tub and check for either mites on the paper towel substrate or poo from the snakes. Either one and I move the snake to a clean tub and clean up his mess and kill the mites. If I see mites I spray the paper towel substrate with reptile spray to instantly kill them. Then I remove the paper towel and spray the inside of the tub with reptile spray, use a paper towel and wipe the whole thing down inside and out with reptile spray, then use a dry paper towel to dry it off. Then I spray the inside of the tub with water and wipe it out and dry it real good with a paper towel. I change out the water and Dixie cup and put down several layers of fresh paper towels.

Ever since I removed the aspen bedding, put down paper towels, and started checking on my snakes every day their attitude totally changed. My wild and crazy king snakes are really mellow now and don't mind being handled at all. My woma python is all coiled up in the back over the heat, just loving the new paper towel substrate, seems very happy! It could also be that I'm removing the smell from the tubs every day if they poo, or that they are pretty much mite free now, or a combo of all of these.

I noticed a few red spots still on my Fire Pied, the one that had the worst infection. So I sprayed him down again today, it's been a couple days since I last sprayed him down. I checked on him after about a half hour and he just had one mite on him running around, it was so small I could barely even see it. I'm guessing that mite will die eventually.

I also noticed that the tub below the one with the worst mite outbreak had quite a few mites in there on the paper towel tonight. This is the tub with my Woma python, I didn't see any mites on the python itself, only on the paper towels all around him.

I plan on wiping all my snakes down once a week until I get to the point where I don't see any mites at all on the paper towels. I'm also wiping down the rack all around the tubs with reptile spray if I remove one and before I put a new one back in the rack. This has been one crazy experience!