# Hissers with mites...



## Arachniphile (Jan 8, 2003)

I have 7 Hissing Cockroaches.  When I got them they and the peat moss they were in had alot of mites.  I relocated them to a small clean KK.  I didn't have any egg crates so I went with a number of toilet paper rolls instead.   I have cleaned as many mites as I can off of them with a dry soft toothbrush but they have bunches of the little buggers holed up underneath.  I made a few attempts to clean the undersides of them but they are not real cooperative at the task.

Even if they are harmless.... I don't like them.  They gotta go.  

I'm thinking a bath of some sort is in order... Little baking soda maybe? I mean, after all they ARE cockroaches...  I thought they were hard to kill... lol

Any experience or input is helpful here... 

PS:  If you ever wanna soften a person up to spiders a bit...  Show em the cockroaches first...  lol.  Not one person yet has liked the cockroaches more....


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## atavuss (Jan 8, 2003)

I have heard it said that the mites that infest roaches and millipedes are symbiotic, they cannot or will not live on another hosts.  I have a millipede that has lots of mites and I keep it in a seperate room at the other end of my house from my other inverts, call me paranoid but I just don't feel comfortable with any mites of any type.  
BTW, I have to keep my hisser and giant roach colonies hidden in the herp/invert room closet so my wife does not have to look at them, they are the only thing that freaks her out of all the stuff I have.
Ed


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## bwhatch2 (Jan 8, 2003)

when i got my b.discoidales they had mites to, and like you are thinking about doing, i gave them a bath. laughing my ass off the whole time, couldnt believe i was cleaning cockroaches  after i sanitized their tank and put them back in the mites re appeared in force about two weeks later, so i bathed them again, sanitized the container, and switched from a moist substrate to an ultra dry substrate and raised the humidty in the air and havent had any problem with mites since. i have also heard that a good way to get rid of mites on tarantulas is to keep them in an ultra dry environment for a while and since the mites need moisture a lot more than the tarantula they will die off long before the spider. ive never tried that but you might want to. if you do let me know how it works out.

bryan


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## Arachniphile (Jan 8, 2003)

Did you add anything to the water when bathing them?


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## bwhatch2 (Jan 8, 2003)

nope, i didnt add anything to the water, i just rinsed them off in the bathtub, great fun !!!! although i thought i did a pretty good job im sure i missed a bunch which is probably why i got reinfested. IMO it was using an ultra dry substrate that got rid of the mites and not the bathing.

bryan


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## Marc_C (Jan 8, 2003)

what substrate are you keeping them on now? and how do you give them their food, in a dish? also how long do you leave fruit or veggies in there when you feed them? do you feed cat food or anything like that?

I know its alot of questions, but it could be any of these things. If you are keeping them on peat, then you will never get rid of the mites. Keeping them on dry substrate like leaves (i think wade uses kitty litter) helps alot IME.

Marcus-sparkus


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## bwhatch2 (Jan 8, 2003)

opppsssss, i kind of lost track of where this thread was going so im going to back peddle a bit to clarify myself. when i was talking about baths, mites, and dry substrate i was talking about my discoidales, not my hissers, which i have never had a mite problem with.  for my discoidales i use straight, and again dry, vermiculite. for my hissers i dont use any substrate. IME and acorrding to richie "the roachman" willis substrate is not needed for hissers. lots of vertical surface area and humidity are important if you are breeding them, but substrate seems not to be (with hissers only, all other species probably need substrate to breed since the numphs burrow) lots of people use the moist substrate to keep the humidy up, but that creates a number of other problems including obviously a great breeding ground for mites. i have found a much better  more sanitary way of keeping the humidity up. its not very practical if you only have a few roaches or are not trying to breed them. but if you have a large breeding colony, or multiple colonies, its a great way to do it. its cheap to free to set up, very easy to maintain high temp and humidity, allows you to keep you roaches outside in most any climate (if you want to free some space up in you house), and only costs about 5 bucks a month to operate. if anybody's intersted let me know i can tell you how i do it.

bryan


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## bwhatch2 (Jan 8, 2003)

*here i go again*

i got a pm asking for my humity thing so i thought i would post it here in case anybody else is interested i wont have to type it twice.

i actually doubt it is my idea since im sure other people are doing it to, but here it is. an old refridgerator. i called a fridge repair shop and they gave me an old one that no longer worked. i drilled a couple holes in the fridge and freezer door for ventilation. i use a simple heating pad from wal-mart to heat it, and set a pan of water on top of that to provide humidity. the heating pad and water keep the temp between 83 and 90, and the humidity at about 85%. the heating pad only costs about 5 bucks a month to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. i also drilled a couple of 1 inch holes between the fridge and freezer section which keeps the freezer part just a little bit cooler and less humid than the fridge and i use it to keep my tarantula slings in. if you wanted to keep the set up outside you could set up a dual thermastat system, first you would atually need a fridge that worked, then you could set one thermastat to turn the fridge on if it got to hot, and another to turn the heat on if it got to cold. i havent actually done this yet but probably will sooner or later since the number of species i am keeping continues to grow.

bryan


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## Arachniphile (Jan 8, 2003)

My hissers are housed as follows:

No substrate, only paper towel rolls.
Food & water are in dishes and consist of crushed dry dog & cat food and a fruit or veggie every other day.  Any veggie remains are removed within 24 hours.

Simple and very basic setup.  I just want to rid them of the mites is all.


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## Marc_C (Jan 8, 2003)

I dont know what to tell you then. I havent seen too many mites on my hissers , and if I did I prolly wouldnt really care. I did once read on another forum that someone removed the mites off of his millepede with some rubbing alcohol and a q-tip. He said that his milli lived for like a year after that or something. I think its on the insecthobbyist millipede forum if you want to try to look for it.
Marcus-Sparkus


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## Wade (Jan 9, 2003)

The easiest and most practical way to rid a roach colony (or just about any other invert cage including tarantulas and scorpions) of mites is to fight fire with fire: predatory mites, Hypoaspis miles. 

These mites are available through companies who sell biological controls for agricultiure. I get them from biconet.com. They are generally sold as a fungus gnat control. They feed on other mites and insect eggs in the soil exclusively. Once they've eaten all of this, they die off. They come packed in moistened vermiculite. Since they are moisture sensitive, adding a slightly moist substrate during treatment is probably a good idea. After a couple weeks, the pest mites should be eliminated and you can keep it dry again. A couple teaspoonfulls of mite-laden vermiculite for each cage to be treated should be plenty.

I have used these "good mites" to control pest mites and gnats with cockroaches, millipedes, tarantulas, scopions, you name it. 100% successful every time. Can't say enough good things about 'em.  

Wade


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## Arachniphile (Jan 9, 2003)

Right on Wade!!!     I remember reading a post about this before now that you mention it.

I assume that I will need to put the roaches back onto substrate in order to utilize these predatory mites...  Right now they just have paper towel rolls to climb in and on.  

Are the predatory mites expensive?

If I leave them the way they are will the mites eventually die off without any substrate?


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## Wade (Jan 10, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Arachniphile _
> *Right on Wade!!!     I remember reading a post about this before now that you mention it.
> 
> I assume that I will need to put the roaches back onto substrate in order to utilize these predatory mites...  Right now they just have paper towel rolls to climb in and on.
> ...


The predatories go for something like $15-$30 dollars for a container, usually a pint or quart. I buy a quart every year or so and just routinely dose all my "high risk" inverts...all those in big colonies (roaches) and those in moist containers (centipedes, millipeses scorps and T's with high humidity requirements). A one quart container will treat dozens of cages. You need to use them soon after getting them, as the predatories will either cannibalize or die off very soon.

I would probably use substrate during treatment, but after the mites are gone you could go back to the bare cage.  The problem with roach colonies is that as the colony grows, eventually you will have lots of detritus building up. Dead roaches and feces will provide ample food for future mite explosions. I have been experimenting with plain, unscented clay cat litter as a substrate (got the idea from Robert Breene of the ATS). This material dessicates dead insects and feces, reducing the material that mites could feed on. 

The mites might die off without substrate anyway, but this probably depends on what kind of mite you have. If the mites are the type that actually live on the cockroaches, probably not.  Scavanger mites might die off, but they may be finding enough moisture in the food to hang on. Dog food is notoriously mite-friendly. I feed my roaches (and crickets) dry, unmedicated chick mash. This may or may not be better than dog food, but it's cheaper, less greasy, and already ganualated.

Anyway, happy roaching! I like raising roaches as feeders because they're interesting in their own right.

Wade


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## Lasiodora (Jan 23, 2003)

The mites on the hissers are normal. They only hangout on the roaches. My friend has kept a colony for several years. He has fed his reptiles and inverts from this colony. The mites have stayed with their hosts and have never attacked the reps or the invets. There's no need to rid the roaches of them unless you want to waste your time with that sort of thing.
Mike


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## Mojo Jojo (Jan 24, 2003)

DON'T WASH YOUR HISSERS!

I made the mistake of doing this when I noticed mites on them.  I washed 4 of them and lost 3 of them.  Definately don't wash them.  I found out afterwards, that the particular mits on the hissers are symbiotic and not predatory.  They keep the roaches clean and the roaches keep the mites full.  

Don't worry about them.

Jon


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## Wade (Jan 24, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Lasiodora _
> *The mites on the hissers are normal. They only hangout on the roaches. My friend has kept a colony for several years. He has fed his reptiles and inverts from this colony. The mites have stayed with their hosts and have never attacked the reps or the invets. There's no need to rid the roaches of them unless you want to waste your time with that sort of thing.
> Mike *


This depends on the type of mite. It's true that the host-specific mites that are commensuals with the hissers aren't going to bother anything else, but the conditions in a roach colony can also be very condusive to other pest mites as well, especially the scavangers. These latter will probably be there in some numbers no matter what you do, but keeping them under control is a good idea.

Also, if the mites on the roaches are actually parisatising them (Although I think they may just be hitchhikers), it seems they would reduce the productivity of the colony, even if they wouldn't harm other animals.

Wade


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## Lasiodora (Jan 24, 2003)

They haven't hindered or reduced the roaches reproductive capabilities. In fact, the colony supplies a fair amount of offspring which have to be fed out to keep the numbers under control.
Mike


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## Wade (Jan 24, 2003)

But how many more would they produce if there were no parasites?

Again, though, I don't think the normal mites assosiated with hissers are parsites anyway, in which case you're right,they would make no difference.

My point is that there are more than one type of mite that can turn up in an invert cage...some are harmless, some may even be bennificial, but some can cause problems. Arachnophile described the soil as having alot of mites, which suggests a different type than those normally found ON the roaches themselves. Maybe not a problem, but perhaps not worth the risk either.

Wade


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## Lasiodora (Jan 24, 2003)

I see your point and that is exactly why I wouldn't use soil. Straight up newspaper works just as well and can be more easily replaced if need be.
Mike


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