# centipede has mites on it



## echostatic (Nov 9, 2007)

well, my centipede has some small white slow moving mites on its body. i put a cricket in there several hours ago and its covered in them now. what can be done to get the mites off the pede?


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## echostatic (Nov 9, 2007)

im about to upload an up close image of the cricket... hes got em real bad.\


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## Galapoheros (Nov 9, 2007)

Wow echo, I hope to see more of that macro stuff in the future from you.  Nice pic.  I see mites on crickets bought at the stores too.  They are hard to see because of the crickets color.  I think crickets and mealworms are fed grain based food by the supplier that the mites eat too.  So they get on the crix and mealworms you feed your animals.  Makes sense to me that they crawl on your pede, scorp, T, whatever, while they eat.  They prob accumulate that way in addition to them multiplying when they have leftovers as food, like mentioned in another post.  Like Orin was getting at, people like to see the animal eat and over-care for it by feeding it when it does not have an appetite, it's just not hungry.  A dead pinhead is enough for a mite breakout if the humidity is high enough.  I buy crickets, put them in with my B. dubia roaches that live on about 1/2 inch of sub with pillbugs and little Rove beetles running around.  The pillbugs clean up leftovers and the little Rove beetles eat the mites in the soil.  The crickets I buy, immatures and matures, always die within a few days.  But the crickets from the eggs laid by those store bought crickets all make to adulthood and die of old age and don't have mites.  I've been able to control mites by keeping rotten food out and raising my own feeders.  I still see outbreaks now and then but now I know how to control it at least.  I'm wondering if I wouldn't see any mites if I never had fed my animals store bought feeders.  The hypopus stage mites can stay on your pede for months until they starve so don't give up too soon.  In the past I have dropped pedes in cool water and temp drown them.  I pick them up and scrape the mites off the pedes with a knife.  It works on bad cases and the pedes are fine after an hour or so.  I had two pedes recover from being under water for well over 12 hours.  It was winter and the water was cold.  I had put a couple of the smaller TX polymorpha in a terr that I put outside and forgot I had put them in there.  I got about 6 inches of rain one day.  Later the next day I saw the pedes sitting on the bottom surely dead, but, no.  After 2 or 3 days, they were walking around.  I couldn't believe it.  Looking forward to the cricket photo man!


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## echostatic (Nov 9, 2007)

the cricket was swarmed with mites, and was barely able to move when i took the photo. im just hoping that that doesnt mappen to my pede.


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## Nich (Nov 10, 2007)

*hmmm*

looks very familiar


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## Galapoheros (Nov 10, 2007)

Yeah Nick, you can sit and shake your head or repeat your experiences over and over.  It just depends on what kind of mood I'm in.  The mite topic has been hacked hard for a long time.  But there is a remote possibility of hearing something new too I suppose.


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## mindlessvw (Nov 10, 2007)

true that todd i hope to see something different in the mite area...i am glad someone really pushed to show more of the mites other than the basic pics!


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## Kharnifex (Nov 10, 2007)

great pic, boy I really hate mites.


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## Nich (Nov 10, 2007)

Galapoheros said:


> Yeah Nick, you can sit and shake your head or repeat your experiences over and over.  It just depends on what kind of mood I'm in.  The mite topic has been hacked hard for a long time.  But there is a remote possibility of hearing something new too I suppose.


Galap, whats your gripe? I put my input in, and he posted a pic, which made the id obvious. 90% of mite threads have no pics, this one is great as he has posted pics with good clarity (bravo on the macro savvy shot). I would get rid of the pede and trach the contents of the cage. Its really not worth risking contamination.


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## echostatic (Nov 10, 2007)

thanks for the compliment, what do you mean avoiding the risk of contamination? what contamination do i have to worry about aside from my cricket enclosure and centipede enclosure? can mites travel out of the jar and through my room to latch onto my millipedes? i dont know what else i would have to worry about.


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## Galapoheros (Nov 10, 2007)

My post wasn't an attack.  I do the same thing.  Sometimes I sit and shake my head at the same old stuff and pass it up, and at times I get up the energy to post the same stuff again.  Like I said, just depends on my mood.  Didn't mean to get you defensive.  I think you're right in a big way.  It's over and over again.  I think there should be a "mite" sticky.


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## cacoseraph (Nov 10, 2007)

echostatic said:


> thanks for the compliment, what do you mean avoiding the risk of contamination? what contamination do i have to worry about aside from my cricket enclosure and centipede enclosure? can mites travel out of the jar and through my room to latch onto my millipedes? i dont know what else i would have to worry about.


grain mites can travel on almost all surfaces. i have had them spread from infected cags to other cages


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## Nich (Nov 10, 2007)

Galapoheros said:


> My post wasn't an attack.  I do the same thing.  Sometimes I sit and shake my head at the same old stuff and pass it up, and at times I get up the energy to post the same stuff again.  Like I said, just depends on my mood.  Didn't mean to get you defensive.  I think you're right in a big way.  It's over and over again.  I think there should be a "mite" sticky.


 I agree, a real mite sticky would be killer. There are SOOOOO many sp. of them that are harmelss that will overrun a tank, only a conglomeration of photos would help. there are a ton of pics of mites, but all are from random sources. A group of photos of mite on specific inverts would help. 

          For echostatic;
     All mites can be carried on all things, as previously stated.....lets say afew latch onto a an escaped knat or simply made thier way out they could go from cage to cage infesting ALL of you collection. Chances are small, but once you have mites in an enxlosure they generally re-emerge. I treat parasitic mite as ebola, isolate the affected population and burn it....  Though this is disturbign and can cost you. There are alternatives but they are gregorious and dont carry a total sucess margin.

Reactions: Like 1


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## Elytra and Antenna (Nov 10, 2007)

echostatic said:


> thanks for the compliment, what do you mean avoiding the risk of contamination? what contamination do i have to worry about aside from my cricket enclosure and centipede enclosure? can mites travel out of the jar and through my room to latch onto my millipedes? i dont know what else i would have to worry about.


1,000,000 to 1 they're already in all your cages (assuming you haven't kept all your cages on mite paper and sterilized everything). Don't worry about it, they're ubiquitous, the issue is avoiding conditions in which they'll multiply to become a problem.


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## Elytra and Antenna (Nov 10, 2007)

Galapoheros said:


> Yeah Nick, you can sit and shake your head or repeat your experiences over and over.  It just depends on what kind of mood I'm in.  The mite topic has been hacked hard for a long time.  But there is a remote possibility of hearing something new too I suppose.


 You could pick one or two good threads and paste in the links when a new thread starts up that way you've provided a good answer and not thrown up the unfriendly "go search" answer.


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## echostatic (Nov 11, 2007)

i must have had some bad luck searching then because i didnt find anything other than people asking things like mite ids and general info. i didnt see any mites on my millies so im gonna clean out the centipedes jar and see what happens.


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## echostatic (Nov 11, 2007)

when i checked on the pede this morning it was swarmed as well, and barely moving. i have it submerged in a jar of cold water in the hopes that it will rid it of the mites, but it really looks like its going to be dead before the day is done.


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## echostatic (Nov 11, 2007)

it looked to be in the middle of a shed too...


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## mindlessvw (Nov 12, 2007)

its really difficult to search through the threads for the mite info imo...i tried and found tons of stuff that was not what i really needed....pics are your best bet


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## echostatic (Nov 12, 2007)

it would seem to be a moot point now, the mites killed it.


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