Help please python has mites. Head twitching.

[HerpDerp]

It wasn't part of a formal study. I was also employed in animal houses etc at the time, but experimenting with mite control methods was on my own dime and time. Feel free to resume hating me.

It says something about you that you'd immediately think that someone doing their best to help animals, who had spent a lot of time researching and educating others, who had studied and become a qualified biologist, was a sadist for putting into use what they'd learned for the sole purpose of better caring for animals, because of an experiment which caused zero suffering to any animals.

Unfortunately, there is no way to find the safety limits without going slightly beyond them. The information at the time simply was not available. To my knowledge, no one has ever done this research in a formal capacity, and most of the information I see online about it today, about 20 years later, is based on guesswork and supposition and is quite incorrect, and I only know that because I've done the first hand experimentation. I can absolutely say without any doubt that the many animals I've been able to directly treat personally because of what I learned, as well as indirectly by advising others over the last 20 years or so because of what I learned in those experiments gained far, far more benefit than the zero animals harmed during the experiments. If you want to call me sadistic for that, hey, power to you. I generally get no abuse for literally eating animals which I can literally buy dead at the supermarket, and people don't get furious at you when you forget to cook or eat all of it and some of your chicken casserole ends up in the garbage, with that death entirely wasted, but when an animal is used to gain knowledge to help countless others, apparently it's 'sadism'.

Fun fact, the first time I logged into APS I was in a laboratory with a gecko in experimental apparatus hooked up to a computer, recording measurements. I was browsing while the experiment was taking place and that's when I found this site. That was part of formal research within an institution, so I suppose you don't need to be angry at me about that. Funnily enough, the colony of geckoes at that institution had mite issue which was solved by the use of a treatment which had been worked out by someone carrying out non institution-based research.

Enjoy your pork chops/chicken wings/fish/bolognese tonight.

You're obviously stuck on being offended despite my apology, which is fine. Maybe you have some residual guilt that you need to sort out. It must be hard to do stuff like that to animals you love, even if it is for the betterment of those animals.

But once again I'll say, maybe next time put what you are saying in context for those of us who don't have your resume tattooed on our forearms for quick reference. Despite what you may believe and what your sanctimonious speechs imply no one is born with the genetic knowledge of who you are and what you have done during your life.

Congratulations on becoming a biologist and all the extremely important work you do. It sounds like the scientific community would be at an absolute loss without you and your amazing work. Keep up the great work!

 

[Herpetology]

 

[Pythonguy1]

This all looks very familiar to me...

 

[Sdaji]

You're obviously stuck on being offended despite my apology, which is fine. Maybe you have some residual guilt that you need to sort out. It must be hard to do stuff like that to animals you love, even if it is for the betterment of those animals.

But once again I'll say, maybe next time put what you are saying in context for those of us who don't have your resume tattooed on our forearms for quick reference. Despite what you may believe and what your sanctimonious speechs imply no one is born with the genetic knowledge of who you are and what you have done during your life.

Congratulations on becoming a biologist and all the extremely important work you do. It sounds like the scientific community would be at an absolute loss without you and your amazing work. Keep up the great work!

Guilt for what? Hard to do what? You seem to think I've sat around wantonly torturing animals or something. As I said, I've never observed any suffering at all in any of my experiments with the mite spray. What would there be to feel guilty about? The geckoes I was hooking up to the computer/equipment were having their respiration rates measured at different temperatures. Breathing isn't traumatic for them, and having the gasses they have exhaled being collected and analysed in a separate chamber never seemed too painful.

As you say, you don't have my resume tattooed on your body, you don't know anything of my history, but you are the one who jumped into describing my actions as horrific and immoral, despite the fact that they were nothing of the sort. If you're going to abuse someone it's your responsibility to ensure it's justified, not theirs to inform you that it's not.

 

[HerpDerp]

Guilt for what? Hard to do what? You seem to think I've sat around wantonly torturing animals or something.

well........ that is the impression you have given.

As I said, I've never observed any suffering at all in any of my experiments with the mite spray.

except for the ones that went into seizures and died.

What would there be to feel guilty about? The geckoes I was hooking up to the computer/equipment were having their respiration rates measured at different temperatures. Breathing isn't traumatic for them, and having the gasses they have exhaled being collected and analysed in a separate chamber never seemed too painful.

I don't know why you might be feeling guilty. It was merely a suggestion why you might be insisting on being so stuck on being offended instead of accepting the apology and moving on. But who knows why you would choose to be this way.

As you say, you don't have my resume tattooed on your body, you don't know anything of my history, but you are the one who jumped into describing my actions as horrific and immoral, despite the fact that they were nothing of the sort. If you're going to abuse someone it's your responsibility to ensure it's justified, not theirs to inform you that it's not.

You might want to remember that we don't have your resume tattooed on our bodies, and don't know anything of your history, and provide some context when you mention "insanely overdosing" animals. It's just something to consider. Obviously you don't have to, and you don't seem to be to great at taking criticism so I can't totally understand that you won't take this on and wont learn from this misunderstanding. And I completely understand why you will continue to argue the point. But just something to mull over in the future.

As I said, continue the great work. I hope that the community can continue to benefit from all the work you have and will do in the future.

 

[Sdaji]

well........ that is the impression you have given.

Hey, if someone can't read it's not my fault.

except for the ones that went into seizures and died.

They were not being experimented on. They were given small doses according to the best available information at the time, in order to treat the mites they had on arrival. The original poster in this thread is seeing the exact same thing, are you saying he is conducting experiments? The research itself which caused zero harm provided valuable information as to what happened in those non experimental cases. If you think the experiments caused the spasm issues, please read the account again and if you still don't understand it let me know and I'll be happy to clarify it for you.

I don't know why you might be feeling guilty. It was merely a suggestion why you might be insisting on being so stuck on being offended instead of accepting the apology and moving on. But who knows why you would choose to be this way.

There was no apology, there was a continued unjustified insult vaguely veiled as an apology. I don't especially care about being insulted or abused, but it's wrong to stand in the way of research and the collection of information.

 

[Joshyboy]

Can the guys argue I g over right or wrong do it somewhere else. I came here fir help, not for he said she said arguments. I appreciate the help but not interested in personal politics

 

[Rob]

It completely blows my mind, that even after the above post I get a notification to approve yet another off topic post. So fair warning - If your post does not relate directly to the OP in a helpful way, it will very likely be deleted and you will be hit with a reply ban. If you must continue the off topic discussion please take it to PM.

 

[Joshyboy]

Thank you all for your help and advice. He doing a lot better. Has settled down again and is no longer soaking in his water so fingers crossed he’s all good and will be back to his happy self again soon. He’s a bit sulky but so would I be after going through that. Cheers.

 

[“Monty” Children’s Python]

Hi all, new here and need some help. My daughter has a diamond python. Had it about 3-4 weeks. She took it to vet a local vet who deals with snakes to get him checked and make sure what she was doing was right. They gave the all clear and said he was in good health. The following day she noticed him fully submerged in his water bowl. Later that day she tried feeding him (never had an issue before) he’d take the mouse then drop it and go back in the water. She called the pet shop where she got it from and they said most likely he has mites.
she removed every from the cage and sprayed everything with carringtons reptile insecticide. She also lightly sprayed the python avoiding its head as advised by the pet shop. Tonight when she took it out to treat the cage he went into like a spasm twitching his violently. Can anyone offer any help, treatment advice. She’s new to keeping snakes and quite upset seeing him like this.
Thankyou
Josh.

Definitely mites there is few ways to get rid of them the guys with years of experience will have solutions for you everything will fine there is also wipes for mites at kellyville pets but you will be fine with the advice with the experience here .good luck

 

[OzMonitor]

Hi all, new here and need some help. My daughter has a diamond python. Had it about 3-4 weeks. She took it to vet a local vet who deals with snakes to get him checked and make sure what she was doing was right. They gave the all clear and said he was in good health. The following day she noticed him fully submerged in his water bowl. Later that day she tried feeding him (never had an issue before) he’d take the mouse then drop it and go back in the water. She called the pet shop where she got it from and they said most likely he has mites.
she removed every from the cage and sprayed everything with carringtons reptile insecticide. She also lightly sprayed the python avoiding its head as advised by the pet shop. Tonight when she took it out to treat the cage he went into like a spasm twitching his violently. Can anyone offer any help, treatment advice. She’s new to keeping snakes and quite upset seeing him like this.
Thankyou
Josh.

Hi I do not normally post here but thought I might have some useful suggestions you might think about. I am an entomologist by profession working in the Government and privately for near 30 years and was responsible developing the integrated mite management strategy for the papaya industry here in Australia so have spent many years directly researching mite management in Agriculture. What I can tell you is this as I do not know all the specifics to your situation so I cannot really provide direct advice to you but I will provide some general dot points below which might be useful.

Suggestions for treating mite outbreaks

1. Many insecticides do not work on mites you will need to use a miticide

2. Many insecticides are either toxic stomach poisons and need to be ingested to be effective or contact nerve poisons (don't use them on your pet).
I would not be spraying your pet directly with an insecticide the symptoms you described of your pet having spasms and twitching violently sound like the effects of nerve poisoning from the insecticide you used. Don't do this again you could end of killing it or making it seriously sick eventually leading to death. Spraying an insecticide on a reptile will be absorbed through the reptiles skin and can kill them!

3. You will need to take everything out of your enclosure and treat everything in the enclosure and everything that goes in the enclosure with a miticide as well as everything around the outside of the enclosure that could be a source of mite infestation.

4. Have another temp clean enclosure you can use for about a week while your main enclosure is being treated with the miticide.

5. Mites can also be controlled with alternative safer treatments directly applied to your pet as oil plant based treatment. These work by suffocating the mites (product example here). I have worked extensively with these natural products and they are very effective (general info on oil based treatments). I think something like these for treating your pet would be a safer option but still need to be used sparingly and cautiously. I know the chemistry of most insecticides and they can be very toxic to animals and reptiles. I would never treat my lace monitors with an insecticide.

6. You will need to get yourself a hand lens (example here) or something similar to check your pet for any signs of mites around 7-10 days after your have done everything above for more mites.

7. If there is more mites present you will need to repeat the above. You may get rid of the infestation after the first treatment but you may need to repeat with follow up treatments of the enclosure and your pet until the infestation is eliminated then be vigilant to make sure the re-infestation does not happen again and continue.

8. Mites have a very short life-cycle depending in the species and build up large population quickly so make sure you give regular checks of your pets. Try and locate the infestation source. It may have come from somewhere where your enclosure is or from the pets food source.

.........................

Well hope this is helpful. This is my first post here. We have three large lace monitors that have just turned 3 years old

Let me know how you go.

 

[Joshyboy]

Hi I do not normally post here but thought I might have some useful suggestions you might think about. I am an entomologist by profession working in the Government and privately for near 30 years and was responsible developing the integrated mite management strategy for the papaya industry here in Australia so have spent many years directly researching mite management in Agriculture. What I can tell you is this as I do not know all the specifics to your situation so I cannot really provide direct advice to you but I will provide some general dot points below which might be useful.

Suggestions for treating mite outbreaks

1. Many insecticides do not work on mites you will need to use a miticide

2. Many insecticides are either toxic stomach poisons and need to be ingested to be effective or contact nerve poisons (don't use them on your pet).
I would not be spraying your pet directly with an insecticide the symptoms you described of your pet having spasms and twitching violently sound like the effects of nerve poisoning from the insecticide you used. Don't do this again you could end of killing it or making it seriously sick eventually leading to death. Spraying an insecticide on a reptile will be absorbed through the reptiles skin and can kill them!

3. You will need to take everything out of your enclosure and treat everything in the enclosure and everything that goes in the enclosure with a miticide as well as everything around the outside of the enclosure that could be a source of mite infestation.

4. Have another temp clean enclosure you can use for about a week while your main enclosure is being treated with the miticide.

5. Mites can also be controlled with alternative safer treatments directly applied to your pet as oil plant based treatment. These work by suffocating the mites (product example here). I have worked extensively with these natural products and they are very effective (general info on oil based treatments). I think something like these for treating your pet would be a safer option but still need to be used sparingly and cautiously. I know the chemistry of most insecticides and they can be very toxic to animals and reptiles. I would never treat my lace monitors with an insecticide.

6. You will need to get yourself a hand lens (example here) or something similar to check your pet for any signs of mites around 7-10 days after your have done everything above for more mites.

7. If there is more mites present you will need to repeat the above. You may get rid of the infestation after the first treatment but you may need to repeat with follow up treatments of the enclosure and your pet until the infestation is eliminated then be vigilant to make sure the re-infestation does not happen again and continue.

8. Mites have a very short life-cycle depending in the species and build up large population quickly so make sure you give regular checks of your pets. Try and locate the infestation source. It may have come from somewhere where your enclosure is or from the pets food source.

.........................

Well hope this is helpful. This is my first post here. We have three large lace monitors that have just turned 3 years old

Let me know how you go.

Thank you for the advice. He appears to be back to his normal self again with no signs of any more mites. We will monitor him over the next few weeks but at this stage he appears all good. Thanks

 

[sherlock]

Well done on successfully handling the mites. Not fun is it?

For future info, I found these steps to be very successful, and takes any stress out of getting rid of mites:

A relatively easy and painless way to handle snake mites:

We have two snakes and we found that they were both infested with snake mites. We successfully treated them over six months earlier using a spray on them and cleaning and spraying enclosures one week apart and so I was puzzled where they came from this time. Still don’t know.

And the thought of going through the mite treatments again, for two snakes and their enclosures was a pain. And again one week later. And since we sometimes let them out to wander about the house, I had no desire to try and treat the places where they had been exploring. So I decided to try something new.

First of all I gave each snake an extra water bowl that they could totally submerge in, which they quickly started using. Mites would drown and drop off the snakes into the bathing bowl – this was a good indicator of the extent of the infestation.

Then I ordered some predatory mites - Hypoaspis miles – and they hunt down and eat snake mites. Emphasis is on the fact that they hunt and eat snake mites, not snakes, humans or anything else.

They come in a 1Kg tub and costs about $60 ordered over the internet. Spread the soil (a couple of tablespoons) that they came in, into the enclosures and in a couple of days the snakes had white mites crawling all over them. This freaked us out, until we realized, these, were the good guys, hunting down and eating all the irritating snake mites. Within a couple of weeks there were no more mites at all, good or bad. The snake mites were all hunted down and we do not have any problem with snake mites, even months after the infestation. The good mites (Hypoaspis miles) died out once there were no more snake mites to hunt down and eat.

My daughter has better eyes than me and she can quickly spot mites on our snakes, no matter how small. There have been no more mites since.

Hope this helps.

 

[Joshyboy]

Well done on successfully handling the mites. Not fun is it?

For future info, I found these steps to be very successful, and takes any stress out of getting rid of mites:

A relatively easy and painless way to handle snake mites:

We have two snakes and we found that they were both infested with snake mites. We successfully treated them over six months earlier using a spray on them and cleaning and spraying enclosures one week apart and so I was puzzled where they came from this time. Still don’t know.

And the thought of going through the mite treatments again, for two snakes and their enclosures was a pain. And again one week later. And since we sometimes let them out to wander about the house, I had no desire to try and treat the places where they had been exploring. So I decided to try something new.

First of all I gave each snake an extra water bowl that they could totally submerge in, which they quickly started using. Mites would drown and drop off the snakes into the bathing bowl – this was a good indicator of the extent of the infestation.

Then I ordered some predatory mites - Hypoaspis miles – and they hunt down and eat snake mites. Emphasis is on the fact that they hunt and eat snake mites, not snakes, humans or anything else.

They come in a 1Kg tub and costs about $60 ordered over the internet. Spread the soil (a couple of tablespoons) that they came in, into the enclosures and in a couple of days the snakes had white mites crawling all over them. This freaked us out, until we realized, these, were the good guys, hunting down and eating all the irritating snake mites. Within a couple of weeks there were no more mites at all, good or bad. The snake mites were all hunted down and we do not have any problem with snake mites, even months after the infestation. The good mites (Hypoaspis miles) died out once there were no more snake mites to hunt down and eat.

My daughter has better eyes than me and she can quickly spot mites on our snakes, no matter how small. There have been no more mites since.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for that info Sherlock. We use predatory insects cm all the time with our aquaponics system but never thought of using them fir this. Can I ask where you bought them from (just incase I need them in the future). Really appreciate the feedback

Just found bugs for bugs have them who we get everything else through. Cheers

 

[Archer]

Wondering, if the poisoning issues to snakes could be due to the mites regurgitating the chemical directly into the blood, like ticks can? That might account for the correlation between high mite load and the snake being affected quickly, as opposed to the reported non issue when mite load is low.
One for further research, i guess

 

[nick_75]

Thanks for that info Sherlock. We use predatory insects cm all the time with our aquaponics system but never thought of using them fir this. Can I ask where you bought them from (just incase I need them in the future). Really appreciate the feedback

Just found bugs for bugs have them who we get everything else through. Cheers

I know people that have bought Hypoaspis mites from this place https://www.biologicalservices.com.au/products/hypoaspis-24.html and successfully removed reptile mite infestations. There have been posts on the subject of predatory mites in the past, use the search function here for hypoaspis, predatory mites or biologicalservices for more reading.