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Black spots on hatchling

skittledoo

skittledoo

New member
I noticed this morning that my bloodred hatchling has a few small black spots on his underside. There are like 3 or 4 on his neck and you can see that it is underneath the scale since it's making the scale poke out a little from the rest of the scales. Does this sound like mites? Tick maybe?
 
I got him from Drew. I didn't notice these spots before and I've had him a few weeks now. They didn't seem to be moving, but I'm going to pull him out an examine him closer. I've had snakes off an on for years and never dealt with mites. What's the treatment for them usually?
 
skittledoo said:
I got him from Drew. I didn't notice these spots before and I've had him a few weeks now. They didn't seem to be moving, but I'm going to pull him out an examine him closer. I've had snakes off an on for years and never dealt with mites. What's the treatment for them usually?
Click to expand...

Drew at Curio Creatures
 
Yeah, I know Drew......

I have not had mites since around 1996 or so. Back when I had them I treated my whole collection (which wasn't many back then) with something called "California Lotion". It worked like a charm, but I think now there are better treatments out there.
 
I think I read somewhere online about using mineral oil to smother the mites and then bleaching everything and changing out the substrate? I only have the two snakes right now, but whatever treatment route is best I'm going to definitely treat both snakes
 
Before you do that, wait just a little bit (maybe til tonight when most people are out of work around here), and see what a few others have to say about it. I think there must be better treatments out there than mineral oil.
 
When we got in Serj, he was infested in mites. I use Mite off for all new arrivals tanks. So I treated him with that after a bath, which will drowned them, then a quick dip in veggie oil, make sure you get run him through a warm wet towel after to get most of the oil off or you run into scale rot, then I rubbed him down with mite off. We also put him on paper towels so that we could see the mites that die and fall off. Rinse and repeat every 48-72 hours, including changing the paper towels and wipe out the viv with the mite off. To help them not spread to others you can put vasline at the top of your viv all the way around, mites will be unable to pass the vasline. I also used Lice treatment on the carpet and furniture around where Serj's viv was. I was paranoid about them spreading, but it took about 3 weeks for Serj to become mite free and they never spread.
 
Iv had 1 mite outbreak and was right after we picked one of our hatchlings up. But we treated her with luke-warm water and betadine solution (enough to make the water a very light tea color. We bathed her in it once a week for 3 weeks and kept her in a tupperware with PAPER TOWELS as which was menioned earlier (so you can see the mites as they fall off) . That worked like a charm and never had a single problem after.

HOWEVER, I was told that using betadine is more than OK to use to treat mites, but using it on hatchlings is not recommended (adults is more ok) due to them gaining a resistance to the medicine at a young age. So, we were told to use Listerin ALCOHOL FREE and do a water / listerine mix (not sure the solution, think its like 1tsp listerine / 1 gallon for adults, but im not 100% sure) . I have not used the Listerine yet b/c I have only had 1 outbreak and nothing since, but have heard NUMEROUS people saying the Listerine worked like a charm and was not harmful in anyway to the snakes, regardless of drinking it.

But the mites come from a dirty environment, so make sure the snake gets a bath, the cage and EVERY piece of housing in the cage gets a bath and keep them isolated for a bit with some paper towels as substrate and you should be ok. Mites suck to have, but if you treat them quickly enough and take the right steps everything will be A-OK.
 
Thank you so much. I'm giving him a bath today and then wiping down his cage. Hoping to get rid of this problem. Checked my snow up and down and don't see any on her, but I'm going to treat her and clear out her viv as well to be on the safe side
 
Late to the advice, haven't had mites yet (since y'know I've had a snake for about a month) although we did have a problem like that with one of our dogs, not the same I know but the treatment is pretty similar

Give them a bath in luke warm water for about 20mins, drowns most of the mites, and a lot of the others will try to swim off before drowning. Won't get rid of 100% off the bat, but it gets rid of a fair few, do it once every couple days and they'd be gone. The big problem is getting the enclosure clear of them.
 
I don't have experience with treating hatchlings. Be VERY careful- treatments meant for adult snakes can be toxic to a hatchling and kill it.

Do a search for the Nixx Treatment, though, and make that at half strength and use that to treat the enclosure and surroundings, carpet, walls, everything, once a week for three weeks. And you need to put the baby on paper towels until the problem is resolved. And treat everything in his viv.If you have any wooden items in the viv, bake those at a low temp for an hour or so.
 
As Nanci said, I recommend the Nix treatment. I have used it in the past and it was successful. I responded to your email yesterday, let me know how it works out...you know how to get in touch with me. I don't frequent this forum that much anymore.
 
Do not treat the baby with full strength Nix mixture. I'd probably do a quarter-strength, if I used it at all. I mean, a quarter of the recommended dilution for snakes.
 
Oh crap I already treated him. I only lightly misted him and his viv with the stuff so hopefully it won't hurt him. I checked him this morning and he seemed fine, but I'll keep an eye on him. I'm bleaching all the hides and water bowls today before sticking anything back in the snake tanks. How much bleach to water to I use to soak their stuff, how long do I soak the stuff and how long do I wait after rinsing the water bowls to out water in them?
 
You know, to be completely honest, I have never trusted using bleach to clean anything involving vivs or housing, because it's bleach. So, I just put everything in the bathtub, fill it with burning hot water, pour some dish soap in that bad boy and let it sit for a bit. Has worked everytime for me and makes it pretty easy.

skittledoo said:
Oh crap I already treated him. I only lightly misted him and his viv with the stuff so hopefully it won't hurt him. I checked him this morning and he seemed fine, but I'll keep an eye on him. I'm bleaching all the hides and water bowls today before sticking anything back in the snake tanks. How much bleach to water to I use to soak their stuff, how long do I soak the stuff and how long do I wait after rinsing the water bowls to out water in them?
Click to expand...
 
skittledoo said:
Oh crap I already treated him. I only lightly misted him and his viv with the stuff so hopefully it won't hurt him. I checked him this morning and he seemed fine, but I'll keep an eye on him. I'm bleaching all the hides and water bowls today before sticking anything back in the snake tanks. How much bleach to water to I use to soak their stuff, how long do I soak the stuff and how long do I wait after rinsing the water bowls to out water in them?
Click to expand...

I don't like bleaching porous things because I feel like it could never get rinsed enough. But with things like the water bowl and tank, as little as one tablespoon of bleach per gallon is enough. That's actually a federal regulation for sanitizing anything you prepare food with. Because it's only 200 ppm, the bleach will neutralize if you just let it air dry. You could rinse if you want, but it isn't necessary if everything is 100% dry.

But that's just a suggestion from personal experience. I've never had a mite problem.
 
You don't need to bleach everything. You just need to spray the viv with Nix and let it dry. Then repeat, what is it, every three weeks, two more times, so you catch any hatching eggs.

I don't see what mites have to do with dirty conditions- they come from other snakes. Just treat all her stuff and keep her on paper towels for the course of treatment. You can give her little cardboard tubes and non-porous ceramic hides until treatment is finished. I think, with a hatchling, I might not do the next treatment if I inspected very closely and didn't see a single mite on her.
 
For the bleach thing, I normally buy the domestos wipes, the ones which say they are safe to use on baby stuff. Still bleach but very weak. Wipe out everything, and when you need to soak just leave the wipe in there since the liquid in that will spread at an even weaker strength when stuff is being soaked.
 
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