First time emp owner-really concerned about white lice or mite looking bugs crawling under his folds

Pandinus Number of posts : 3 Age : 33 Registration date : 2012-07-20

I've aquired an emp from my husband as a pet and I've really grown to like this little guy. I breed pythons and know absolutely nothing about emps beyond the general husbandry research that I did. I keep him humid and have a little under tank heater and keep him on coconut bark. My local pet store only sells crickets by the dozen so I dumped them all in at once, which I realize now was a REALLY dumb idea. They had babies and before I knew it there was hundreds of little crickets in my scorp tank. So I dump out the entire tank and rinsed it thoroughly. Meanwhile I had my emp in a plastic tupperware container and when i lifted it up to look at his belly I noticed teeny tiny little white bugs crawling under the folds of his plates. Seriously when I tell you they're small I mean I would have missed them if I didn't have 20/20 vision. Although my pythons have never had mites I'm aware and always on the lookout for them-but these didn't look like mites. Atleast not the ones snakes get. Are there different kinds of mites that scorpions get? I did some googling and heard some people talking about "good cleaner" mites. What the heck is going on with my little guy? Someone please help Sad

Babycurus Number of posts : 280 Age : 38 Registration date : 2011-10-02

They sound like they could be mites, make sure you put the under the tank heater on the side of the enclosure , I think somewhere I saw pill bugs help eat the mite eggs so you could try that, Ive never had a large infestation but at one time I did have an emp with mites it was only a few and put him in very shallow water and once they came off pulled him out, obviously you dont want to have you're little guy drown though.

Ludedor24 wrote:: They sound like they could be mites, make sure you put the under the tank heater on the side of the enclosure , I think somewhere I saw pill bugs help eat the mite eggs so you could try that, Ive never had a large infestation but at one time I did have an emp with mites it was only a few and put him in very shallow water and once they came off pulled him out, obviously you dont want to have you're little guy drown though.

+1 to everything said.

Also, you may want to take a look at this: [HOW TO] Rid an enclosure of mites

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