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Mites


Mikhail_Karkarov

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First I must apologize for not frequenting this board as much as I would like to. In adition to my three roach colonies I have a lot of tarantuals and find my free time taken with their study and care. Anyways I wanted to run something by the board.

Recently I purchased 1K dubia to add to my collection. The seller was completely atrocious and I wound up getting shorted about 500, but that's beside the point.

Some one else ordered some and theirs arrived with mites and mold problems. I am assuming they came from different colonies. He has been unable to identify the mites except as tiny and white (lol) and said he's found them on the roach food, the roaches, and swarming over a dead roach. If they were only on the food I wouldn't worry. I know there are symbiotic as well as parasitic mites. For treatment he has moved the colony to a new enclosure w/o substrate and is doing a period of decreased humidity and food supply. He plans to continually transfer them in the hopes of leaving mites behind.

I've heard of using predatory mites and/or isopods to combat mites. Any thoughts on this and where would one obtain such mites? Does his approach sound good? I've never had mites so I didn't have much info for him.

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Your friend's approach should work out fine but may take a while. Here's a thread with some ideas on dealing with these mites:

mite discussion

I've not ordered predatory mites so I can't recommend a vendor nor do I know if they really would be useful to combat a grain mite outbreak. Here's the first site I noticed on a search engine selling the predatory mites:

predatory mite sales site

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  • 7 months later...

I'm new here but this is what brought me here. I got a Hissing roach today and he/she had those nasty mite things all over him/her particularly around his/her neck and face. before I researched these mites and found this site I thought that they were parasites. So my solution to get them off of him or her I basicly for a few seconds held him/her under the faucet which got the nasty things off of him and didn't hurt him. Which brings me to my Question. If I was to get these predatory mites would they attack any other pet once they ate the mites??? and that aside what is a isopod????

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I'm new here but this is what brought me here. I got a Hissing roach today and he/she had those nasty mite things all over him/her particularly around his/her neck and face. before I researched these mites and found this site I thought that they were parasites. So my solution to get them off of him or her I basicly for a few seconds held him/her under the faucet which got the nasty things off of him and didn't hurt him. Which brings me to my Question. If I was to get these predatory mites would they attack any other pet once they ate the mites??? and that aside what is a isopod????

You would be safe. Predatory mites only feed on other mites, gnat larvae, springtails, etc. I have a variety of roaches, tarantulas, scorpions, etc., and they are all fine after using predatory mites a few times.

An isopod is a multi-legged, segmented little critter remotely similar to a millipede. In some parts of the USA larger isopods are identified as "sowbugs" or "pillbugs" and "rolly-pollies". They come in a variety of sizes and colors. You may want to use Google.com to look up the name isopod and view the images in the results to see some examples better.

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You would be safe. Predatory mites only feed on other mites, gnat larvae, springtails, etc. I have a variety of roaches, tarantulas, scorpions, etc., and they are all fine after using predatory mites a few times.

An isopod is a multi-legged, segmented little critter remotely similar to a millipede. In some parts of the USA larger isopods are identified as "sowbugs" or "pillbugs" and "rolly-pollies". They come in a variety of sizes and colors. You may want to use Google.com to look up the name isopod and view the images in the results to see some examples better.

Laughing the hell out loud!!!! We callem Doodle Bugs down here in Pewston Texas. would the run of the mill out door variety be sufficient, or for sanitary reasons should I get captive raised? I've always liked the local variety use to catchem all the time as a kid.

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Laughing the hell out loud!!!! We callem Doodle Bugs down here in Pewston Texas. would the run of the mill out door variety be sufficient, or for sanitary reasons should I get captive raised? I've always liked the local variety use to catchem all the time as a kid.

It depends on how you look at it... the ones common in Texas multiply pretty quickly and would be fine I would think, some of the other "exotic" varieties have been raised in better conditions and you are assured clean livestock, and the white or orange can be nifty too. But go for it. I used the sowbugs once and had jillions of them before too long. The others (Armadillidium vulgare) are slow but persistant.

:blink:

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Common names are fun. Doodle bugs is a reference to antlion larvae (making small trails and pits in sand) in many parts of the US.

Oniscus isopods (sometimes called "skirted" isopods) seem to work out especially well, communally, in my roach bins. They are somewhat in between pill bugs and softer-bodied sowbugs, in terms of hardness. They're also quite large. So, some of my reptiles and amphibians will also eat them. In the meantime, they keep the cages clean and the "pests" away. Of course, after a mantis case hatches I'm always pretty grateful for a fungus gnat infestation. I just drop a few hungry mantises in and everybody's happy (except the fungus gnats which don't register thoughts or emotions from inside the belly of a mantis!).

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