Mites, Mites, and more Mites!!

[CrabbyChelle628]

I haven’t posted for a while as everything has been going well, but starting in Mid December my family and I went on vacation for a week and then I was sick for a week or two so they didn’t get the care they needed. Changing the water and food and spritzing the moss was one of the last things I did before I left for vacation and I left them extra food and I added more leaf litter and fresh damp moss before we left for a week. I also used these vacation feeders I have gotten from a couple of different sellers that are LHCOS approved. Every day I checked there temp and humidity, on the last day driving I checked and saw all these spots on the glass and was hoping and praying it was just sand. Most of it was but when I zoomed in with my Wyze cam I saw that some appeared to be moving. On the drive home in the camper we got caught in a blizzard that extended our trip for a extra day. Then we were almost home when I started to get sick. So when we finally got home it was like 8pm, the time their light shuts off , so I decided to do everything in the morning. The next morning I regretted not doing it the night before as I was so sick I couldn’t even get out of bed. So my family had to take care of them for me. Usually I feed them dry full meal mixes with color boosters and extra calcium and extra protein, as well as worm castings and greensand and their water is fresh and salt water treated with prime and with a air bubbler. Usually I change the food and water every 3 days and mist the tank and moss pits once every week to week and a half. I have always had a few mites the small grain mites and food mites. I went in there yesterday thinking I was going to be wiping the inside of the tank down with a paper towel. As I was in there I desired to use my phone to zoom in on the sand on the front of the glass. Needless to say there were tons of mites, and this was above the substrate as high up as four inches below the top of the tank. then when I was about to shut my camera off. I noticed something else right on top of the substrate, to just below it, I saw so many little tiny grey mites but these were much bigger then the ones that were up higher, these you could see with you naked eye easily. They were crawling on the leaf litter, on the substrate, on the moss. Another kind of “thing” I saw was almost like a micro worm. If I can get my video to post I will be able to show everything.


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[JoeHermits]

Outbreaks happen, and the additional food, litter, and moss you added to last the crabs while you were away probably gave them what they needed to explode.

They’ll go down over time as supplies diminish. Stick to dry foods when you can and keep damp plant material to a minimum so there’s less attractive stuff for them.


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[CrabbyChelle628]

These are the new kind you can see them on the edge of the leaf and there are so many of them


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[JoeHermits]

Springtails? They’ll fluctuate with food availability.


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[CrabbyChelle628]

This is why I’m worried I would say about 90% of these dots are mites
And I’m not sure how to get them under control. They are giving me the heebie jeebies.


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[CrabbyChelle628]

I have at least 2 kinds of mites. Does anybody have any recommendations to get them under at least something that resembles under control? So at least they are not crawling all over the walls of my tank?


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[JoeHermits]

Predatory mites are a safe active control, if you don’t mind adding more water inverts. Otherwise passive measures like reducing food and moisture are your best bet.


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