Ticks and Mites Oh My!

Late in Febuary I bought a bunch of snakes at a reptile show, a rainbow boa, ball python and corn snake. All great snakes, all adjusted fine to their new home, ate well etc. Perfert. Then I noticed my ball python was soaking in his water dish. First I thought, maybe he was in shed again and I haven't been keeping the humidity up high enough, Then I noticed the small black specks. Great, he has ticks or mites. No biggy, there are several reptile safe sprays out there now to use. SO off to the petstore I go, they didn't have any in stock. Ok, I live in a big city with about 10 different petstores chains. Went to every one in a half hour driving distance, not a single one had any tick spray. The closest nibble was one who didn't have it in stock at the time. Ok, will wait the few days, but did they get it in, no of course not.

Ok, by this time, I was worried the ticks would spread to my other snakes. I checked, and sure enough, the corn and rainbow had them. Great. Just fucking great. Did some search online, found a great article on how to remove ticks. Found out most products are useless. Others are too toxic and most don't kill the ticks because their shells are very thick and the sprays don't penetrate. Ok, I could go to the vet and get a shot...but that's three snakes and possiblely 4 geckos as well. That's alot of money, money I don't have. So, will follow the other steps I found online. They involve soaking the reptile in luke warm water with betadine mixed in. Ok, soaking is doable, and betadine isn't too hard to get and not very expensive. Soak reptile, put in pillow case, now to clean the cage and environment. Lets see, wash with hot soapy water to drown mites. Disinfect cage with strong bleach solution, for 10 minutes, to kill germs that ticks/mites can carry. Ok done. Put cat/dog flea/tick collar into cage, seal up and let sit for three hours. Air out completely. Thank the gods that I don't have wooden cages...or furnature..much, much more work involved in that.

So, spend entire afternoon and early evening doing all this, washing and cleaning the shelves etc to ensure everything is as tick/mite free as possible. And I may have to do the same process over again once or twice in the next 2-6 weeks to completely rid my reptiles of ticks and mites.

Next time I buy a reptile, it's getting a complete washing, soaking etc, to kill any mites it may have before it has a chance to spread to my other animals. And hear I thought ticks/mites were only a problem with wild caught reptiles, not captive bred.

If only I had another place, then I could have just flea bombed the entire apartment, let it air out a day then come back with my animals, but unfortunatley I can't do that. None of my local relatives like reptiles. Sigh.