I've somewhat recently been undergoing a journey to discover effective ways to kill grain and fungus mites. While I have found successful methods, (which I will be making longer posts on in the future) I have a few questions about the effectiveness of Snout Mites against common pest mites. I recently found a snout mite in a shipment of Panchlora nivea, and was able to get some footage and pictures of it before isolating and killing it to prevent a possible infestation, which seems unlikely given how specialized they are, but with mites I think it's always better safe than sorry.
Here's the video I took:
Picture I found of one feeding on a springtail: https://bugguide.net/node/view/166964/bgimage
Based on the little information I could find on them, it seems like they can only eat live prey, which is promising given the main issue with using hypoaspis mites to kill off grain mites is once all the macrofauna have been killed off, the hypoaspis mites just fill the cuc role, thus making the use of springtails impossible in the future. Snout mites are also horrible at climbing (as you can probably see in the video), which is IMO their best quality, since it ensures they can be easily contained.
If anyone here knows anything about Snout Mites I would love to hear from you to discuss their diets, husbandry requirements, etc., because if they really can only feed on living macrofauna and cant fill the role of a CUC crew, they just mite be an effective and safe treatment for pest mite species.
Here's the video I took:
Picture I found of one feeding on a springtail: https://bugguide.net/node/view/166964/bgimage
Based on the little information I could find on them, it seems like they can only eat live prey, which is promising given the main issue with using hypoaspis mites to kill off grain mites is once all the macrofauna have been killed off, the hypoaspis mites just fill the cuc role, thus making the use of springtails impossible in the future. Snout mites are also horrible at climbing (as you can probably see in the video), which is IMO their best quality, since it ensures they can be easily contained.
If anyone here knows anything about Snout Mites I would love to hear from you to discuss their diets, husbandry requirements, etc., because if they really can only feed on living macrofauna and cant fill the role of a CUC crew, they just mite be an effective and safe treatment for pest mite species.
Last edited:
