just a little white bug question

[Tom Forman]

Ello ello,

just discovered some white bugs in with my fruit beetle grubs.

Maybe someone has seen them before? Are they mites?

I want to know what they are before I kill them all.

[Tom Forman]

well I have concluded that they are mites.

Am a bit gutted as I had such a high opinion of the company I got them from.

[Richard Groves]

well I have concluded that they are mites.

Am a bit gutted as I had such a high opinion of the company I got them from.

Don't be too gutted, these mites do seem to have a habit of just appearing out of thin air. They thrive on any moist substrate such as peat and coco fibre.

I have them in all of my scorpion tanks and they cause no harm at all as long as the populations are kept in check. They are not parasitic mites, these mites will live on the carcases of dead crickets and any organic matter lying around. To keep them under control, allow the substrate to dry a little before re-wetting. It's not a cure, but it keeps population explosions down!

I used to panick every time I would see one of these mites when i first got into the hobby, now i realise they just come with the territory.

[Tom Forman]

thx for reassuring me rich,
I am quite happy that I have not had mites so far though.

These did not appear out of thin air, they were definetely hiding in the coco substrate my beetle grubs came in.

I really hope they were not able to spread. Once they've been here...

Even if they are not harmful, don't want em, just like I don't want lice about either.

They have all hopefully been cooked. Fingers crossed.

Edit: think I should let the company know..?

[Peter Lacey]

I think I would worry about seeing that many together but I think (actually more a case of I know) that we've been over-worrying. It seems to be part of the natural eco-system which evolves. I check my substrates for mites making sure those that are kept a little moist don't suffer from too many and the simple cure is to dry them out something the tarantula is quite capable of withstanding. I had mites covering all the enclosures that I kept in my large exo - Pokies, Psalmos, Avics, slings and woodlice/springtail cultures. They were inside/outside the individual enclosures and inside/outside the containing Exo! However I didn't regard it as a population explosion. So I let things dry out and its under control again. A few months ago I'd have worried sick and taken drastic action, today I'm much more relaxed. I found it rather strange there were mites amongst the woodlice/springtail culture but I'm not sure where the source was.
Perhaps we've taken Stanley Schultz written view on this a little to the extreme and need to accept we'll never eradicate them.
Interestingly there are good and bad mites and I was wondering if there were any physical difference? Colin recently asked if the mites I had were white or brown, is there any significance to this? Is there a way of encouraging the good and do we benefit from a controlled population of the bad?

[Nick L]

OK, I’ll chip in here as mites and the misinformation about them that seems to abound on the various T-forums REALLY bugs me!

As Peter Lacey says these types of mite are nothing to worry about. They are ‘detritivorous’ and eat any dead organic matter that they can eek a living out of. If there’s not much ‘preferred’ food around like dead prey items, faeces, rotting vegetable matter, etc. they will subsist on the organic particles in the soil/substrate. They WILL be in the cleanest of enclosures in their 100’s/1,000’s. They have the capacity to reproduce rapidly and in great numbers and do so when there is ample ‘preferred food’ around – this is when you notice them; their populations have now reached 10-100,000’s +! They do NO harm to your T but are unsightly – if you want to reduce (notice I don’t say ‘get rid of them’!) their numbers to acceptable levels dry the enclosure out a bit and be a bit more ‘house proud’ removing dead food, waste food boluses, etc. Within a few weeks the population will have crashed back down to the ‘normal’ unnoticeable levels. For a quicker solution, see below. I wouldn’t recommend micro-waving the substrate – (if you do it correctly) you may well kill them all off but you’ve now got a substrate oozing with a wonderful food-source (dead mites) for the next lot – it WILL become re-infested rapidly… Such mites and their eggs are everywhere! A good visual indicator that you’ve got this ‘type’ of mite is that they are rather slow moving with a rather ‘bumbling’ walk if you look at them under the microscope/hand-lens. Colour varies too but they generally tend to be light coloured – white, yellowish, pale-pink, etc. There are many species of these ‘detritivorous’ mites and they vary in size from the truly microscopic to quite large (1-2mm) – the ones in the photo above look like ‘grain/flour’ mites.

Another ‘type’ of mite that you WILL find are ‘predatory’ mites. These are generally darker in colouration than ‘detritivorous’ mites, being various shades of brown. But, their main characteristic is that they move fast – they really ‘bomb around’. These mites are carnivorous and prey upon the soil fauna including the ‘detritivorous’ mites. This type of mite has a slower reproductive cycle and doesn’t experience the same ‘boom and bust’ population fluctuations (predators tend not to). Once again these do NO harm to your T. A species of predatory mite is commercially available as a biological control for gardeners – Hypoaspis miles (see http://www.defenders.co.uk/pest-problems/sciarid-flies.html) – these are marketed mainly as a control for sciarid fly but they will also make swift work of a booming ‘detritivorous’ mite problem. I have tried these and they really do work very well.

A third type of mite that you may come across are ‘parasitic’ mites. I’ve only seen these twice, both on WC spiders. They tend to be quite large 1-2-3mm and attach to the interskeletal membranes of the spider mainly around the carapace. As I’ve only ever come across them twice, and as they were easily removed, I haven’t researched them much. Most parasites have rather complex life histories with multiple hosts and I would guess that they are unlikely to reproduce on and/or spread from a captive spider but, I may well be wrong... I would be interested to hear of peoples’ experiences of this type.

The final ‘type’ of mite I’d mention is one that does kind of concern me, as I haven’t been able to find much out about it… These are what I assume are parasitic mites on crickets – see http://www.arachnophiles.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=6660 (or, perhaps if Kate Arbon reads this she could post-up the rather good photo of the GBB sling that she posted on Arachnoboards a while back!). These are tiny mites that are a pale yellow-brown colour (= same colour combination as brown crix) and look just like innocuous raised bumps, they move around little, seeming to stay stuck fast like a limpet; on crickets they can be anywhere, on Ts look between the chelicerae. You WILL NOT notice them on crickets unless you get a ‘bad batch’ that are VERY HEAVILY infested. I’ve found them in virtually EVERY batch of crickets I’ve bought since I became aware of them – I may only find 1 or 2 mites on a cricket when examined closely under the microscope but they ARE there and I bet ubiquitous amongst ALL suppliers. They only seem to explode in numbers when the crickets are kept too moist and/or cool – the only commercial breeders that would give me any info about them (everyone else flatly denied that mites were a problem) wrote to me that controlling them is a matter of periodically “keeping the crickets at above 34 Celsius and a relatively low humidity for 18-24 hours”. I accidentally infected a lot of my slings with these about a year ago… It was my first 'bulk bag' and I had been keeping them for about 2-3 weeks at around 26-28C, had containers of moist peat for egg laying, and was feeding plenty of fresh veg. and leaves – i.e. too cool and way too humid. I’m sure that that batch of crickets had the usual very low infestation rate of mites and my rearing conditions caused the mites to boom. I now keep crickets bone-dry, around 28-30C, don’t attempt to breed them, and NEVER feed fresh foods, only dry (‘bug gel’ is the only source of moisture). What the life cycle of this species of mite is I do not know – I can’t even put a name to the species (the one livefood supplier who would speak to me about them didn’t even know!) – if anyone can find any specific info. on these I’d be VERY interested to read it! What, if anything, they do to your captive T, I do not know either – they accumulate between the chelicerae and if the infestation is large spread to other soft interskeletal membranes nearby. With my Ts that had them the mites did not seem to increase in size (i.e. didn’t grow), they also didn’t seem to increase in numbers so I guess that they are incapable of reproducing without crickets and/or some other aspect of their life-history not present in a T's enclosure. They did seem to be quite an irritation though – chelicerae seemed to be excessively rubbed/cleaned and one Avic. versi. sling rubbed virtually all the hair off the front of its carapace trying to keep them off the ocular turret. As the Ts were all slings manual removal was not possible and the predatory mites didn’t touch them; after about 6 months or so of ‘monitoring’ feeder crickets and removing shed skins as soon as they were shed (the mites are very slow movers and it takes them some time to move from the shed skin back onto the T) they had all but petered out. Whether they are ‘actively parasitic’ on the T I’m not sure (i.e. whether or not they are piercing the skin and sucking fluid), I’d guess not and think they’re just congregating between the chelicerae because it’s a nice moist spot and/or maybe feeding on liquefied food there. I’ve checked all spider purchases carefully with a hand-lens for the past year and this type of mite IS common (I’d say they’ve been on around 60% of the Ts I’ve bought, even from reputable sources). I’d happily bet that most who read this have Ts with this mite and do not realise it – you need to look with a X10 or X20 hand-lens between the chelicerae (do this when feeding, when the chelicerae are spread), you wont notice them with the naked eye unless the infestation is heavy when it will look like a slight light-tan coloured discolouration between the chelicerae. So, does anyone have any 'real' info about these?????? [As I've said I've not found any and I've spent hours googling.]

Waffled on for far too long. Would just add that, as many people have suggested elsewhere, woodlice are good at preventing ‘detritivorous’ mites from booming – they out-compete them for food and because their reproductive rates are much lower you wont see booms in their population.

Nick

[Tom Forman]

you deserve some rep + for that post, n1 Nick.

I'm still going to kill em all though, even if I have got the "good" mites.

If I had them all over, then I'd probably just accept the fact but I can still get rid of them all, I'm sure I can.

[Kate Arbon]

As if by magic



About three of my Ts got these, this guy was most heavily infested. He actually had them on the base of his palps as well as his chelicerae.

On the other Ts that had them, I simply didn't feed them for a few weeks and took away their waterdishes, and the mites went away. It didn't work for the GBB, but when he moulted they came off on his old skin and I haven't had them back since.

[Peter Lacey]

Nick that's a great read, very informative. Personally I enjoy long posts as a couple of remarks only beckons more questions, thanks for taking the time.
On studying some moults I too have found tiny white dots that don't seem to move but my magnifying glass has never been strong enough. They were few in number and I presumed they were just bits of vermiculite. I'm now tempted to use the microscope a little more to get a much closer view.
thanks for the info and the pic

[Colin D Wilson]

Peter
The differing colour of mites i refered to has been covered in Nicks essay above, but basically being parasitic for white / cream and predatory for the browns.

forgot to add, i use a 10x ruper (jewellers eyepiece) they are excellent for this matter and also for sexing exo's down to spiderling size too.

[James Box]

Nick, that post was great thanks very much, very informative!

[pan harley]

Nick
thanks so much for the info!!!!!
very informative and valuable to read.