Dealing with Mites

Hi, all!

I'm pretty new to this forum, so I'm not sure if this is covered yet but I wanted to share a really important discovery I had made when my beardie got mites a few years ago. I believe she had gotten them because of some wood I had introduced to the enclosure without soaking and baking it (100% have learned my lesson). We were able to gently and successfully remove the mites with a dentist pick we had laying around, but the really important part is that dawn soap worked wonders. It suffocated the pests and was very gentle on the lizard. I just wanted to let people know in case they run across these annoying parasites!!

Also, so far I am absolutely loving this forum! I'm so glad I came across it.

That's an interesting find, thanks for sharing this info! I know of the betadine soaks but hadn't considered dish soap. Do you know which kind of mites they were?

I'm not sure what exactly they were called (this was a long time ago), but they were red and were kind of halfway under her belly scales. I actually still have the photos in my photobucket account if those would help!

http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/3...a-a85e-157a5ea47917_zpsef444822.jpg.html?o=31

http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/3mmali/media/IMG_0333_zps0a6818be.jpg.html?o=34

http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/3mmali/media/IMG_0331_zpsff513fef.jpg.html?o=36

The mites are all the red figures. When we used the dentist pick (the one with the hook), we just gently pushed the mite out from under her scales. They really weren't hanging on very strongly, so it wasn't that bad. We also temporarily kept her in a smaller glass tank with nothing in it while we sterilized her custom enclosure. When we put Dawn soap on her, the mites practically backed out of her which made it really easy to remove them and get the ones that were tricky to pull off. Luckily there weren't really any on her head so we didn't have to worry about soap getting anywhere it shouldn't. The soap did make her pretty slippery, but she practically fell asleep whenever we were de-miting her so it really wasn't an issue!

Good to know this ! Thanks for posting.