Mites in tank??

[Viki Clark]

Hi everyone, I have just been changing the water dish in Mildred's tank and I noticed a tiny white thing that looked like a miniscule grain of rice burying itself in the substrate. I'm worried now that this is something harmful could anyone please advise me if I should change the bedding to get rid of whatever it is and any of its possible friends I may not have noticed? (I've tried to attach photos of tank but I'm afraid I'm not very computer literate and they seem to have disapeared without attaching)
She lives in a ferrero rocher tub with lots of ventilation holes and the substrate is a peat/vermiculite mix, it's pretty new also I only put it in about a week ago.
If whatever they are are harmful how do I prevent them from coming back?
Any and all help appreciated!!

[Colin D Wilson]

Hi Viki,
The answers very simple and we'll go along the "best to be safe" line

Rehouse your spider in a temparary container (preferably a clear one where you can see if she has any little visitors walking around on her)

Get all the substrate out of the tub and either change it (making sure the tubs rinsed under hot water (just in case)) or pop all the substrate in a suitable container in the microwave and nuke it for 15 or 20 seconds.

I tend to nuke all the substrate that goes in a spider enclosure anyway just to be sure.

Hope this answers your question, any other problems just ask.

Colin

[Peter Lacey]

Mites arrive on food items. They live in damp conditions and quickly die without moisture. Tarantula on the other hand are adept at preserving their body fluids.
If you remove the water bowl and let the enclosure dry out for a few days you'll probably find that's the simplest of cures.
Its worth putting your tub in a completely dark room, getting a magnifying glass and torch and coming back a few hours later. If there's little white circular things slowly crawling across the substrate then I'd definitely follow Colin's advice. If however they are limited to where the water bowl is/was then dry them out. On the other hand if you find they're tiny but long bodied creatures its likely they're springtails which are beneficial to cleaning your enclosure.
You haven't mentioned the size of your T or species but most Ts prefer or acclimatise themselves to dry substrate, so keep your water restricted to the bowl and only occasionally overflow onto the substrate.
If you choose to move your T, place an empty clean cricket tub onto the substrate and coax the T gently into it. Its fine in the cricket tub as long as its not subjected to too much heat. If your mite problem is really bad and on your T you may wish to include a small water bowl in the tub. The mites will hopefully move to the water bowl so a quick wash will eradicate, repeat as necessary.

[Tom Forman]

spider mites are not white so I doubt it was a mite.

However microwaving the substate would be safest. Follow Colin's advice but since it is only a ferero box, maybe you can just remove the spider and microwave the box as is then let it cool down for a few hours...

Would save the hassle of moving all the soil about and since it is only shallow, there is not much need to mix the soil while microwaving it.

[Colin D Wilson]

Careful not to accidentaly give it too long in the microwave with a ferrero box, they tend to melt if the substrate gets too hot and steamy (unless they've altered the plastic it's made of)

I've made that mistake !!!!!

[Christian Elowsky]

I'll politely disagree that you need to clean and "nuke". There are various inverts which act as clean up crews, especially if the conditions are moist. Collembola, nematodes and mites being what I've found in my enclosures, also with fungus gnat larvae and adults will pop up.

All of these are 100% harmless. The only time I worry about mites, if is I see htem ON the tarantula or scorpion. If you see a great number of them ON you animal, then yes, nuke it all. If not, relax.

Just the other day, I noticed a water dish that was literally swimming with mites a a friend's house. When I placed the mites under a dissecting microscope, I saw they were very "hairy" which made me think they were grain mites. Upon closer inspection, a huge out break of grain mites was found in a near by roach colony with was being kept too moist. A little clean up and some time to dry, all the mites are gone, but even in snow drift numbers they'd have been harmless to the tarantulas.

It's best to try to get an ID on your "mite" in question, but my personal rule of thumb is to look at the spider. No mites on spider = no problem with mites.

Good luck.

Christian

[Peter Lacey]

Its interesting to read your comments Christian, as they are in contrast to your colleague over at ATS, Stan Schultz who suggests in his book "The Tarantula Keeper's Guide" that "they will eventually cause its death". Whilst I don't have the experience to confirm mites are not harmful it would seem odd to suggest not to take precautions until the mites were on the T. If mites get on the T and the water source dries up the likely place the mites will target are the mouth and book lungs.

I guess you must have the experience to deal with such an issue but I think its a little unwise to suggest to the novice to take the same approach. To my mind, "a stitch in time saves nine".

[Viki Clark]

Re

Peter she's a B smithi, now about 1 inch across, I got her in December when she was about the size of my little finger nail, had two moults since then so now looks more like a spider and less like a crumb with legs!

Colin you recommended microwaving your substrate, the stuff I bought is from my local exotic pet store (not the garden centre stuff) Should I be microwaving it all no matter where it's from to be on the safe side?

Thank you all for your advice, (its so weird the difference between how friendly and helpful everyone is on here and how little response I get if I ever post on some of the equine forums online) I'll do as you suggest and dig out a magnifying glass to inspect a bit closer before taking any drastic 'house moving' action for the little spid!

Thanks!

[Peter Lacey]

B. smithi, great. Well as its getting away from the sling stage you can easily move over to drier substrate which should help with mite and fungal issues. If you let the substrate dry out but keep a small water bowl (bottle top lid) the mites will move towards this. Its then a simple case of frequently flushing this under the tap to remove the mites.
Its not that your substrate is wrong, or even right, its that it can become a breeding ground for mites if its moist. In my experience the coconut fibre substrate is much better at holding moisture whereas peat tends to dry out easily. So, its dry out time or Duke Nukem!

[Christian Elowsky]

Well, Stan is from a different generation, and I'm in graduate school in Entomology... anyone can do that math. In any case, why waste the substrate, or cause stress? A little thinking and knowledge and all you need to do is sit back and not worry. In quite wet enclosures, isopods are often used to out compete the mites and others, I think folks are more comfortable with those because they're put there on purpose? No idea.

[James Box]

well as Colin said to me many times...add woodlice. they eat the stuff the mites eat, and apparently eat mite eggs as well.

Peter, Stan's book, while an invaluable resource, is very very very old now. alot of new data exists which contradicts much of what was thought at the time.
there is of course the new addition of Stan's book coming out, when no doubt they'll be loads of changes and updating done.

the philosophy of killing all mites does make sense if you can't ID the mites, but tank cleaning animals will help.

i've just discovered tiny white mites in with my H lividum (which is kept fairly dry, so shouldn't be a huge problem) and in with my lot of Yamia sp "Koh Samui" slings...much harder to deal with, as that is kept humid and they are all dug in into random spots, and i'm not sure i can safely find them all to change substrate etc.
it's tank cleaners for them as soon as i have a decent supply!
i don't have a microscope, so no way to tell exactly what mites they are.

[Tom Forman]

<<Deleted cause it was a load of hogwash>>

[Peter Lacey]

James, the original edition appeared in 1998 and the 2nd edition in 2000. Stan informed me the next edition probably wouldn't appear until 2009.
There's 10s of thousands of species of mite. I have a microscope at 300 & 600 & 900% magnification but there's no way I'm going to try and identify which mites I may or may not have. Whilst I appreciate some of the info needs to be updated I'm thinking if Stan has found mites around his Ts mouths and lungs during his long experience of keeping Ts and has subsequently suffered deaths then the last few years won't have convinced the mites to "shop elsewhere". I also would like to add that he suggests the use of woodlice/isopods is in its infancy.
Woodlice and springtails survive on moist conditions just as the mites do, I'm finding they survive reasonably in the moist enclosures but not in the dry ones. Of course I've only started and need to increase my stock but those Ts requiring a drier substrate will always have a far easier method - dry the little gits out and remove the obvious - dead crickets, moulds and bolus.

[Peter Lacey]

Tom, I think you're confusing spider mites with the ones that are found in the tarantula enclosure. I've never found spider mites in my enclosures, but as suggested above there are another 10-40,000 other species of mite to consider

[Tom Forman]

Edit: well look at that lol, I alwasy assumed ppl were talking about spider mites when they said mites but I just googled mites in general and they can be all kinds, not just the spider mite...

Ignore my post.

But check out a gardeners worst nightmare lol: