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I've gathered about a thousand pillbugs and they've been doing great, but now I went to check on them and there's hundreds if not thousands of tiny little bugs everywhere! They're smaller than springtails and brownish red, so I'm thinking they're probably mites. What should I do? Should I be freaking out right now? Will they hurt my pillbugs? They've also infested 3 of my springtail colonyies and my dubia roach colony.

While looking for information on combating mites, I found a thread that only touched on mite paper in passing as an additional preventative. As I've had multiple problems as of late, I was interested in giving it a shot. I found this (http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Mite-Paper-18-10-Roll/dp/B005P0EBGE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1444592163&sr=8-1&keywords=anti-mite+paper#descriptionAndDetails) and was curious if anyone else has any experience using it or a similar product. I'm concerned about placing a chemical laden sheet onto a shelf with my cultures sitting atop it but noted that it is usually used for drosophila cultures with apparent success. Any thoughts are appreciated.

So, the other day i picked a beautiful Magnolia flower for my boyfriend who lives up north where there are no Magnolia trees. I set the flower down on top of my Madagascar roaches enclosure and went to bed. Today i go to clean the water and give fresh fruit..and there are BILLIONS of aphids..EVERYWHERE...the food dish with the chick seed in it looks like its about to walk away. ITS FULL OF APHIDS. They have swarmed all three of my roach containers..they're all over the book case.. I dont know how to get rid of the aphids without killing all my roaches..please god help me... -Jae Marie

I have a handful of G. portentosa adults. In the past few weeks I've noticed a weird white "dust" on one of my males. Not a single other roach has this... just the one male. I've gently given him baths and have entirely cleaned and sterilized their enclosure several times, but the "dust" comes back within a few days. Whatever this dust is, it's TINY. There was one occasion where I thought I could vaguely make out a little white mite walking around, but this dust stuff is sooooo tiny I'm not sure that's actually what I saw. Additionally, I observed my affected male doing some weird behavior the other day: breathing heavily, holding is butt straight up in the air, and flexing his body... I found it very strange and it's hard to describe exactly what he was doing. My impression is whatever this white dust is was bothering him (he had quite a bit on him and I had to bathe him again). Any suggestions on what this is? Grain mites? Fungus? Overgrowth of symbiotic mites? What's the likelihood of this infecting my other roaches of the same colony or moving into my other roach colonies? Thanks!

I received some orange heads awhile back. I split the group into two. One of the groups went belly up in the past couple of days... Care conditions: I was keeping them in a gallon jar with sphagnum substrate, placed in an incubator. Incubator runs 35 C or a bit higher. They had a mite problem that I was going to deal with when I had opportunity. The jar lid had perforations, but there was another container sitting on top of it. There are 2 other jars of roaches in the same conditions (N. cinereous and H. flexivitta - lobsters and giant lobsters) and both were fine. No major change in diet in the past month. I have not checked on them for 48-60ish hours (like 2-3 days) as we have had Thanksgiving holiday Break) When I observed: Most of the orange heads were on their backs with their legs twitching, the rest were dead. What I did: Pulled out the twitching ones and placed them in a clean jar at room temp with a piece of egg cartoon. I won't be able to check them again until Monday to see if any revive (roaches are in my classroom where I teach). The jar of death and its contents were wrapped in a plastic bag, placed outside in a snow bank for several hours (to euthanize the poor beasties and any parasites/pathogens that may have been present), then brought back in and place in a trash can in the hallway (so nothing from it spreads to my other enclosures) My thoughts: Symptoms look like pesticide kill (on backs, twitching) but so far as I know, no new pesticides have been introduced to my classroom, and we have not done any labs with volatile chemicals recently (I hate that solubility lab we do that involves naphthalene!) Also, the two other jars seemed fine, but were right next to the jar of death. I thought perhaps suffocation, as I know that the jar really is too small for the roaches I had in it. However, I thought that if it were suffocation, they would revive... when I left them, it did not look like they were reviving... perhaps the half dozen in the new jar will be right as rain on Monday more to add later, have to soothe infant now...

Hiya, Well, I have mites in my Red Head tank. The mites look like little milky-colored globules. They are teensy-tinesy - so getting a photo would be tough. They seem to be more interested in the fruit than my roaches. I'm starting to clean the dish and change the food daily. I also use a spoon and scoop up any mites I can see on the substrate. As far as I can tell the Red Heads are all active and doing great. Are these mites I should worry about?