substrate mites?

[tina]

This weekend when cleaning my corn's terrarium I noticed small (period size) light-colored critters walking on the log hides. When I knocked them on some white tile I could see more walking around. I examined my 3m old corns and there was not a single sign of anything on them, you could easily see on the amel that there was nothing there. A friend of mine, who I got the snakes from, said they are probably substrate mites, that although the sani chips were said to be heat treated and sanitized that they could have gotten some in there, and that Provent-a-mite would help. How can I prevent the substrate doing this in the future.

I took the hides and log out, soaked them in a 10% bleach solution, rinsed them and then dried them inthe oven for 1 1/2 hours!!!

Thanks
Tina

[CAV]

I have used similar products and have seen the same infestation occur. I usually dump the old substrate and replace it with new stuff. The only way to completely eliminate this risk is to use paper substrates.

[bmm]

If you still want to use loose substrates (which yes often come with little bugs of various sorts) you can put it in the freezer, or bake it first.

But I am a fan of paper.

bmm

[tina]

At what temp should I bake the substrate, I think I baked my log a bith too high, it got a toasty color to it now!!!!

Tina

[Traci1]

I have a similar situation but with my feeder superworms. I see nothing on my snakes or their cages, but man there are a ton of itty bitty white mites all over the plastic cage my superworms are in. (the worms are food for my leos) And they seem to be mulitplying. If anyone has any info about this I'd greatly appreciate it. I got the bedding and the worms from wormman.com, I think I'm going to email him about it to.

Thanks !

Traci