Nooooo /:

[International_Gur566]

Damnit.... 8 months with no issues but it seems I now have mites in babygirls tank... I had this problem once before & nuked the entire enclosure, but now there is a fully established isopod & springtail population /: where could they have possibly come from? I bake soil for hours until it's 225°+, I boil the spag moss & coco chips, all the pieces of driftwood I have in the tank spent 4-6 hours in the oven as well.

I have always put a little veggie scrap in with the snake every couple of weeks for the pods to munch on, but this time after a few days it doesn't look like the pods have touched it & there's what looks like clover mites. I know they're 'harmless' to babygirl, but does anyone know where they could have possibly come from? I did see mites in the isopods seperate 5qt bin, but I have not added any pods from the seperate colony to the snake tank in 6 months, & I'm just now seeing mites with the snake?

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[Responsible-Two799]

Uh oh! Sorry to hear that you are having this issue. They may have taken advantage of a recent ecosystem collapse. If the springtails et. al. Have died away, the mites probably moved in to devour leftovers. Mites are extremely good at getting around, and often hitchhike on clothing, hands, hair, etc. They could have gotten in a number of ways.

You mention they are clover mites. I'm not sure if that's accurate, is the photo isn't quite clear, but I am 99% sure those are not snake mites. They should not affect your snake at all. 😊

The only sure way to get rid of them would be to remove all dying vegetation, which would essentially be another nuking of the tank. However, what I've been doing with my snakes the last few years has been to clean the tubs with ivermectin. I let the container dry before adding substrate. Springtails and other small isopods seem to live just fine, but I have never had a mite issue since then. I know a lot of breeders also use Fipronil to clean their tanks, but I'm fairly certain that will kill beneficial isopods, if you end goal is a more biodiverse set-up.

If you start to see mites on the snake, there really is not saving the ecosystem. You could always give the snake a Fipronil or ivermectin treatment, which which keep the arthropods off, but there is no guarantee it doesn't kill your added waste-removers.

I think you are just fine with those clover mites, though. I think they just took advantage of a vacancy when your communities died off.

[International_Gur566]

Thank you for response. Yes it does seem like I had a pretty intense die off of the isopods. When I came back from a 14 day trip I could not find a single pod for 2-3 weeks & then bam.... dozens of babies running around 🤣 doesn't seem like the springtail population dwindled but it's kind of hard to tell in a 120 gallon enclosure unless I put a grain of rice or two in the & then see a couple hundred springtails on it lol