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Small insects in snake viv?

toxiclight
05-05-2011, 11:45 AM
WE were cleaning our one snake tub this morning, and found a bunch of small bugs on her log hide.

There are no insects visible on the snake herself, but obviously, we're a bit worried. We threw out the hide, cleaned her cage with a diluted bleach solution, and have her on paper towels at the moment.

She and the three other yearlings that were in the same room all got the same treatment: we popped them in their feeding tubs, and threw out their litter, washed their tubs and hides with a dilute bleach solution, and inspected them all.

There are no insects on any of the snakes, no black specs or anything. The hide we found insects on was a hollowed wooden log that was bought from a pet store...we've had it approximately 6 months and never noticed anything on it prior to today (last check was Sunday when the snakes were fed and the tubs all spot-cleaned) The bugs were eensy and brownish color (I did not pull any off to look at microscopically)

I guess what I'm saying is I'm quite sure it's not mites, but I'm not sure what it was, and we're trying to make certain everything is as clean as possible and bug-free before returning the snakes to their homes. Anyone have any other suggestions?

rickmoss95
05-05-2011, 12:29 PM
what kind of bedding are you using? a friend of mine uses triple ground cypress mulch, and we have found small bugs in there before. i have seen a couple different types of bugs in different types of bedding. they could have come from the petstore also. if you get something off the shelf that has been exposed to mites, the adults may have laid eggs on the item, and not having food for themselves, went to search for food...in the meantime any eggs could have hatched and grown to a size where you can now see them. darker snakes are harder to see mites on, so you may not be able to see them as easily as if they were on an amel or some lighter morph. i would still treat the animals if you are not positive they are not mites, just to be safe. some of the bugs we have found in the cypress mulch are no threat to the snakes, but without knowing for sure what they are i wouldnt take the chance.

josie
05-05-2011, 12:34 PM
WE were cleaning our one snake tub this morning, and found a bunch of small bugs on her log hide.

There are no insects visible on the snake herself, but obviously, we're a bit worried. We threw out the hide, cleaned her cage with a diluted bleach solution, and have her on paper towels at the moment.

She and the three other yearlings that were in the same room all got the same treatment: we popped them in their feeding tubs, and threw out their litter, washed their tubs and hides with a dilute bleach solution, and inspected them all.

There are no insects on any of the snakes, no black specs or anything. The hide we found insects on was a hollowed wooden log that was bought from a pet store...we've had it approximately 6 months and never noticed anything on it prior to today (last check was Sunday when the snakes were fed and the tubs all spot-cleaned) The bugs were eensy and brownish color (I did not pull any off to look at microscopically)

I guess what I'm saying is I'm quite sure it's not mites, but I'm not sure what it was, and we're trying to make certain everything is as clean as possible and bug-free before returning the snakes to their homes. Anyone have any other suggestions?

Skip using the bedding for a bit and either us paper towels (easy to see the small bugs on white paper towels) or newspaper for a while to make sure the bugs arent actually on your snakes.

toxiclight
05-05-2011, 01:23 PM
The snake in the tank is an ultramel anery...very light. I've also checked the snakes in adjacent tubs (a snow, a lavender and a normal). We use aspen for bedding almost exclusively (we had the snow on newspaper for six weeks post-regurge, but she just moved back to aspen)

We checked the water and bedding, but didn't see any brown or black specks, flecks or anything, nor have the snakes been in their water more than normal.

We are definitely planning to keep them on paper towels for a while before replacing the aspen, just to be on the safe side.

SquamishSerpents
05-05-2011, 02:19 PM
a couple times i have found TEENY TINY little white/cream colored bugs. i would have thought they were specs of aspen dust, they were that small. only reason i noticed one was when it went crawling across a particularly dark spot on one of my ball pythons.

pretty much did the same thing you did, cleaned everything out, paper towel for everybody, etc. the bugs never came back, but i assume it was from the bedding. i think aspen can sometimes have little buggies in it, i don't think they're super harmful, but better safe than sorry!

toxiclight
05-05-2011, 02:48 PM
The only place we found the bugs was actually on the wooden hide. Hubby thought that maybe there were eggs on it that had been dormant for winter (just a theory). But we didn't want to take chances, so we're watching them all. We threw out the wooden hide and also the cork hide that our snow had just-in-case. Gives me a reason to buy some more of the little plastic igloos that I fell in love with for hides ;)

josie
05-05-2011, 04:25 PM
You can always treat wooden hides with the same bleach solution you clean their vivs with, let it dry in the sun or even put it in the oven on a very low setting to dry, will kill off any bugs or fungus. Of course plastic hides are a lot easier to keep clean.