Grain Mites

[Northstar Herp]

I didn't know quite where to put this, but I think I picked up some grain mites from some feeder crickets several weeks ago. Anybody ever experienced them, and any tips on getting rid of them?

 

[OhioGecko]

Yes, they are not fun. We got them in our roach colony. We move the whole colony to the garage for several weeks but I'm sure what we did is different than what you need to do for your crickets.

Can you move your crickets to another container and dispose of the substrate in the existing container?

If you can get the crickets into a new container then you can place pieces of apple in it daily and remove them nightly to attract the existing mites that were on the crickets.

You can also place a 3/4 full bottle water or deli cup container of water in the tub and change it daily. The mites will crawl into this and drown themselves.

Good Luck!

 

[Vegas Chad]

Mites are not as big of a deal with a short run insect like crickets; if they were in a roach tub then you have a larger problem on your hand. Like what was said leave some water out and they will go for a swim, but then again you will have crix soup too. How many do you have? Unless you have a ton of crickets just toss them, clean your tubs well and get another batch.

 

[OhioGecko]

LOL, yeah don't use the deli cups, go with the water bottles. Like Chad said, you will have Crix soup.

 

[Northstar Herp]

They CAME with crickets, and are now in my mealworms and the tiny little dubia colony I have just begun.

I've put the feeders in the garage, but will definitely do the water bottle thing. Thanks fellas.

 

[RampantReptiles]

Grain mites eat mold and so are attracted to humidity/moisture. If you can dry out your feeders in some way or try attracting the mite with moisture then that would help. Problem is if you give the moisture they want then you might have a bigger mess on your hands.

Moving them to the garage is an excellent idea. I had grain mites that got allllllllll over. They were all over the rack, all over my mealworm tubs, plastic shelving.... I ended up starting a new colony of mealworms but did not find any ill effects to the geckos consuming mealworms from the colony that had the mites. A few times I found the mites in the water bowls of my baby geckos. I just washed them out and replaced the bowls with freshwater. Once fall/winter came and we turned on the heat the humidity in the house went way down and the grain mites all died. Have not seen a single mite since.

 

[gothra]

I had grain mites before, and that is not fun at all. There were so many of them that they were literally rolling off each other like snow balls down the shelf!! I dumped everything and wiped all thing with bleach water.

There are 2 things that I do now to prevent grain mites: bake all the oats and grains before using them in beddings and allow for maximum ventilation. If possible, keep the ambient humidity as low as possible. They can't survive in low humidity.

 

[Northstar Herp]

Can anybody give me some details on baking the substrate? How long and what temp?

 

[gothra]

I just do 180 degrees for 20-30 minutes.