Kill mites by freezing enclosure?

[Blacat]

Hello! I was wondering if anyone had experimented with killing a mite infestation by freezing the enclosure?
What I mean by that is that my emperor scorpion's cage currently has a mite infestation. I would take out the scorpion and his isopod buddies and put them in a quarantine enclosure to kill off the mites they have on them. Then I would leave the enclosure outside, as we're averaging -15 C to -20 C recently (5 F to -4 F) here. Would that kill the mites, or simply render them dormant?

My scorpion Soup is already in quarantine, trying to kill the mites that decided to crawl on his body is proving to be a tad difficult and a long process. >_<

Thank you for your time!

 

[RoachCoach]

Bingo. They will go dormant. This is not their first rodeo. They don't exist now after a thousand+ years because they caught a chill. You will need to trash your substrate totally and brush your scorpions of any clingers. If you are on a budget then you can boil a couple liters of water and pour it into your substrate sans scorpion. It will kill every and all springtails. Yes, RIP. Just grab another culture. No offense meant to you but you introduced the mites into your sterile environment. You gotta be super careful in the future.

 

[Blacat]

Dang it, that's what I thought.
Yeah, I'm aware I'm the cause for the mite infestation; turns out that 2 crickets I thought had been eaten actually just died in a corner and were absolutly covered in mites. Once I redo the whole decoration I'll be careful that there won't be corners I can't check for leftover crickets.
Thank you for the help!

 

[Poonjab]

Let’s identify type of might first. Then we can go from there.

 

[Kaqpewqt]

If you haven’t already read boinas thread about mites, read it!


I had a mite infestation a few months ago. (Most) types of mites aren't a bad thing for itself, it's the rapid reproduction that's scary.
I threw the substrate away, disinfected the enclosure and put in new substrate. I searched for mites in the other enclosures, there was no big amount in any of them, so I just let these enclosures dry out a little and kept a closer look on leftover food. After about 3 weeks I watered the enclosures again.

Since then I can ocassionally spot a mite, but there's no sign of massive reproduction.

I can just recommend the thread by boinas, it helped a lot.

 

[The Snark]

Sure it will work. Just apply liquid nitrogen in the usual way. Please observe all safety precautions. Not responsible for damage to persons or property. Keep out of reach of children.

 

[viper69]

That’s a waste of time. Throw out the sub!

 

[Matt Man]

toss the sub. Put your Scorps in a dry temporary enclosure while you clean and dry the main unit. Add a small piece of fruit in there as it will attract the mites.
Dirt is relatively cheap people. It's less than $5 USD for 3 bricks of Coco Coir, and you can house, rehouse a lot of Ts with that. I used 1 brick this weekend, mixed with some soil and rehoused 2 LARGE and 1 medium T enclosures