worst mites ever.. help?

hey guys! im just beginning my wonderful new exciting hobby of keeping my friends my scorpions. its going really well so far and in just 3 months have grown my family to 1 desert hairy , 2 emps in a tank together and 3 baby Asian rain forest. this is great, however my feeder box containing meal worms i thought was molding.. but tonight i found out the thick layer of white wasnt mold.. they were mites (im pretty sure) which explains the white patches growing on my baby rainforests that has been freaking me out for a few days now. they are really small so i cant get pictures of them and they dont jump.. they just move pretty quick considering how tiny they are.. and cluster (on my scorpions back)

so tiny white infestation in my entire room now. ive found them on my desks that i keep the tanks on, the sides of the tanks, mostly on my baby scorpions (they scratch themselves with their tails ive noticed more and more) on the walls..

my desert hairy is a very new addition, and i haven't noticed any in his tank yet.. i feel about as stressed as my scorpions must be feeling im pretty sure and i have this plan where im going to put my scorps in isolation for a few days and drown and boil everything they live in. maybe bake it? and brush them off as much as they will tolerate.

i just want to make sure im doing everything i possibly can. my skin is crawling and im not so sure its all in my head anymore

Do you have any pictures of these "mites"?

They aren't likely to cause your Desert Hairy much trouble, assuming you're keeping him very dry as prescribed. Mites flourish in humid environments which is why there are particularly problematic when keeping Emps and Asian Forest Scorpions.

no ive been trying to get pictures but they are soo tiny.. ah HA i found what they look like!

http://www.ntnu.no/ub/scorpion-files/o_alticola2.jpg

they look like tiny white patches, i thought they were mud from the bottom of the tank.. but when i looked closer, i saw the individual creatures too small to capture on my cameras. they have come together in patches that just stay there on my scorpions. my babies are getting the worst of it. one had his entire upper carapace covered from behind his dorsal eyes to where his abdomen begins

ooook. so i found a thread with the exact picture of what i have. and they have determined they are the bad mites. so ive already boiled the tanks and baked them. im going to set them up dryer in the emperor tank and im going to try and keep my baby spinifer's separate. i will try the Vaseline for the babys before drying them out because im worried about ruining their moult. any other tips i should keep in mind? and btw, what are the mites DOING? do they just set up camp on their backs or what? are they.. eating them :S ?!

I'm not 100% positive on what the mites do, but I'm guessing they're parasitic in nature and feed off of whatever they can through the scorp's intersegmental membranes.

Good luck getting rid of them; an infestation that bad is pretty rough. Other than drying out enclosures and putting a thin layer of vaseline on the mites, you can also move your scorpions into a hospital tank -- really just an empty tank with dry paper towels for substrate and a water dish so the scorpion doesn't dehydrate. The overall dryness should help with the mites.

Also, try finding some predatory mites. It's not easy in winter, but you might find them in the substrate of your other moist tanks, or you can leave out a dead prey item and look for larger, fast-moving mites scavenging it in a few days. Move these mites onto your infested scorpions and they should eat some of the bad mites.

I lost my first breeding pair of Emps and their tiny brood to mites many many years ago. Of course then, I was ignorant to such things and had virtually no resources to learn from.

I can't give you any more helpful advice than Mr. Mordax already has. Good luck.