Best way to treat mites?

[dragonofend]

I got a new dehaani pedeling recently and it seems to have mites. From what I’ve heard, they are grain/soil mites since they attach to her top and not her sides.There are lots of small white clusters on many of (presumably her) ribs. I’ve seen that scrubbing a calcium carbonate mix on the infected area and using predatory mites are both ways to treat this, but I was wondering about the effectiveness of these methods and if there are others that are known to work? I’m currently thinking about baking soda since it seems chemically similar enough to calcium carbonate to work. I can attach pictures if anyone is interested.

 

[Ratmosphere]

I have never tried the calcium carbonate method. Hopefully the quotes below could help you out some.

So, I'm going to preface this post with a warning, read the whole thing! There is a method I have used in the past with success, but it may have long term repercussions to your hobby should you ever want to go bioactive. You can order and use predatory mites (Hypoaspis miles) to get rid of grain and other mites. They're about $30 plus overnight shipping. I had a S. dehaani with a bad mite infection when I first started in this hobby. I pulled it out of its enclosure, placed it on dry substrate with a large water bowl, and poured some of the mite laden substrate inside. The grain mites were gone within two weeks (I also noticed some really odd behavior from the dehaani. It would turn the first third of its body and lay on the top substrate, exposing its back where the mites were located. It reminded me of a reef fish using a cleaning station on a coral reef to have smaller fish remove external parasites. Really, really odd). Now everything I read said that once the predatory mites exhausted their food supply, they would turn cannibistic and the population would self extinguish. Great, I thought. It was wrong. The context of the articles I read vis a vis H. miles were intended for outside gardeners with spider mite problems. In those conditions, yes the H. miles might disappear from other predators or just simply reduce their population enough to not be seen, but they won't disappear indoors. To this day, almost three years later, I still have a H. miles population in my animal room. While I've never had a single grain mite problem or spider mite problem on my plants since, I can no longer keep springtails in my bioactive setups. As I learned from @boina in this thread here, H. miles is not a specialized predatory mite, but a generalist that can scavenge and survive on organic matter. This has allowed a small population to survive in my enclosures. Whenever I try to reintroduce springtails, the H. miles population comes back with a vengeance and wipes out the springtails in a matter of weeks. Now, boina did mention that there are specialized predatory mites that only target other mites, but I don't have a species name to give you and have no idea if they can be purchased. You'll have to weigh the pros and cons yourself for your situation. I went nuclear because of clear distress from the dehaani and bad information on their self destructive tendencies. In hindsight, I probably wouldn't have done it knowing what I know now. I'm letting you know this is an option, but there are consequences.

My two cents on this is that you really shouldn't do this to get rid of mites unless they are clearly parasitic, which is rare (but not completely unheard of). Your original pictures shows mite in hypopus stage, meaning they are just cocoons hoping to be carried to a better place by the centipede, and that's their only interaction with the centipede - they are not feeding of it or harming it in any way. Whatever species these are they will either not do well in your enclosure (in which case there's nothing you need to do) or they will do well (in which case you are very unlikely to be able to remove them).
The thing is that you will have mites in all your enclosures, dozens of species, with a handful that are visible to the naked eye. There's no point trying to remove them, and as soon as you do they will simply come back. Think of them as part of the clean up crew. At best you can reduce the number of large unsightly ones, as well as outbreaks of smaller types, by cleaning remains, keeping the enclosure dry, and using springtails.

Having said all that, a large number of visible mites is a sign of an unhealthy enclosure full of decaying organic matter. But if you see this, take it as a warning sign that you need to remove remains, increase ventilation, or dry things out a bit, rather than removing the messengers.

 

[dragonofend]

Aight thx for the help, I’ve been keeping the enclosure clean and drier so hopefully the numbers at least dwindle. Good to know about predatory mites not really working. I’ll still try out the calcium carbonate method and if it works I’ll update the thread. Btw I’ve seen you on YT, you have some awesome pedes!

 

[Ratmosphere]

Thank you for tuning in!