I have had my nelson's milk snake for three months now and I just went to feed her and found her dead. She is covered in mites but i never noticed any mites at all prior to her death. There is no way I would miss that on a bright red snake. I have had mites before so I know what to look for. I did notice her soaking but I know I have a minor humidity problem and I'm working on getting them all in bins to help with that so I thought nothing of it. None of my other snakes seem to have any problems or signs of mites. She appeared to be in shed for a few days before i found her dead. She was eating great and only missed her last meal due to being in shed. What happened here? How could I miss a mite problem until death?
-
Posted 12/19/2024.
=====================
I am still waiting on my developer to finish up on the Classifieds Control Panel so I can use it to encourage members into becoming paying members. Google Adsense has become a real burden on the viewing of this site, but honestly it is the ONLY source of income now that keeps it afloat. I tried offering disabling the ads being viewed by paying members, but apparently that is not enough incentive. Quite frankly, Google Adsense has dropped down to where it barely brings in enough daily to match even a single paid member per day. But it still gets the bills paid. But at what cost?
So even without the classifieds control panel being complete, I believe I am going to have to disable those Google ads completely and likely disable some options here that have been free since going to the new platform. Like classified ad bumping, member name changes, and anything else I can use to encourage this site to be supported by the members instead of the Google Adsense ads.
But there is risk involved. I will not pay out of pocket for very long during this last ditch experimental effort. If I find that the membership does not want to support this site with memberships, then I cannot support your being able to post your classified ads here for free. No, I am not intending to start charging for your posting ads here. I will just shut the site down and that will be it. I will be done with FaunaClassifieds. I certainly don't need this, and can live the rest of my life just fine without it. If I see that no one else really wants it to survive neither, then so be it. It goes away and you all can just go elsewhere to advertise your animals and merchandise.
Not sure when this will take place, and I don't intend to give any further warning concerning the disabling of the Google Adsense. Just as there probably won't be any warning if I decide to close down this site. You will just come here and there will be some sort of message that the site is gone, and you have a nice day.
I have been trying to make a go of this site for a very long time. And quite frankly, I am just tired of trying. I had hoped that enough people would be willing to help me help you all have a free outlet to offer your stuff for sale. But every year I see less and less people coming to this site, much less supporting it financially. That is fine. I tried. I retired the SerpenCo business about 14 years ago, so retiring out of this business completely is not that big if a step for me, nor will it be especially painful to do. When I was in Thailand, I did not check in here for three weeks. I didn't miss it even a little bit. So if you all want it to remain, it will be in your hands. I really don't care either way.
=====================
Some people have indicated that finding the method to contribute is rather difficult. And I have to admit, that it is not all that obvious. So to help, here is a thread to help as a quide. How to become a contributing member of FaunaClassifieds.
And for the record, I will be shutting down the Google Adsense ads on January 1, 2025.
-
Responding to email notices you receive.
**************************************************
In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.
What happened to my milk snake?
- Thread starter BlueCrowned
- Start date
After some poking around I'm hearing that the only way a snake dies from mites is neglect. I assure you she was not neglected in any way. Here is a photo of the body. As soon as I saw the mites I rushed outside to get her away from my other animals so this was taken with a spotlight. The perfectly round dots appear to be mites. They were moving all over the body. The rest is eco earth.
The pic didn't work, sorry.
Upon closer inspection and further research I am fairly confident impaction from eco earth killed her. She has a ton in her mouth.
Not necessarily. Snakes in their death throes will often snap at anything so she could have grabbed a mouthful of the eco earth as she was dying.
Also if she was on the eco earth that's likely why you didn't notice the mites as they'd blend right in to the substrate.
How long did you have her?
Never mind, saw you had her for three months. How long did you quarantine her?
Just as a peace of mind, I had a small GTP for a few months. Now I look at this snake every day, he's displayed right next to my gaming PC, which I sit at for the better part of every night after work. I went to bed on a Friday, woke up on Saturday and he was COVERED. I'm talking mites here, mites there, mites climbing out of the freakin enclosure. I had taken a photo holding that snake 2 days prior, not one on it. They just seem to EXPLODE. So, very well could have been that you hadn't seen them, and they sucked her dry overnight.
I wasn't able to quarantine her properly in a completely separate room but I did the best i could for a month.
I inspected my other snakes and didn't notice any mites, Fwiw.
I inspected my other snakes and didn't notice any mites, Fwiw.
Mites travel. Even though you aren't seeing them on your other snakes now it's a good bet the rest of your snakes have them. Also a female mite that has had a blood meal can survive for many months before needing to feed again. You absolutely must treat the rest of your snakes and I wouldn't get any new ones any time soon.
QT is at least 90 days with the snake on paper substrate because that lets you see mites quickly.
One of the snakes in question is an amel corn snake. I would see any dark specks on her right away.
The supposed mites on the milk snake seemed different than the ones on my boa when she had them. Could they have been a harmless mite in the substrate which appeared after her death?
The supposed mites on the milk snake seemed different than the ones on my boa when she had them. Could they have been a harmless mite in the substrate which appeared after her death?
Im just not willing to believe that mites I had not noticed on my snake at all for three months would suddenly kill her overnight. That makes no sense, especially based on what I'm reading: for mites to kill a snake there would have to be severe neglect, there would be other signs, she would have to be crawing with them prior to her deatg
Crawling with them prior to death**
Those look like the ones that were on mine. And even if you don't see them, please treat. I used a combo of Provent-a-mite and Nix. I couldn't see them on my other boas until I put them in water and they started to die and fall off onto my hands. You don't want to mess around with them, the sooner you treat for them the sooner your plague will be over. They are not good.
If you kept your snake on eco-earth then there's a good chance you would have never seen the mites because they blend in to it.
At this point you need to accept that you have a full-blown infestation on your hands and it's all-out war on the little buggers. Nothing should enter or leave your collection until the mites are gone.
Also this is an excellent writeup on the quarantine process from an exotics specialist veterinarian in Australia. Note that 90 days minimum is recommended in a minimalist setup (as in, no natural substrates) so that you'll notice pests like mites immediately.
http://www.herpvet.com.au/all-about-quarantine/
hotlips
New member
"...Could they have been a harmless mite in the substrate which appeared after her death?"
No, "harmless mites" wouldn't be feeding on her as these are. I'm sorry for your loss, more so for your snake, but you missed the mites on this snake when you got her, & using a substrate they didn't show up on helped them hide until they did what they always do without treatment: their population exploded exponentially in a short period of time & killed your snake by sucking her blood. It's a tough way to learn this lesson. I'd be putting all my other snakes on white paper towels for a while, immediately giving them supervised soaks in mildly soapy water (Ivory) & quickly investing in some "PAM" (Provent-A-Mite), as mites travel to other cages and it would be a miracle if your other snakes don't have them too. You can accidentally transport them from one cage to another on your clothes, & you should assume that you did.
No, "harmless mites" wouldn't be feeding on her as these are. I'm sorry for your loss, more so for your snake, but you missed the mites on this snake when you got her, & using a substrate they didn't show up on helped them hide until they did what they always do without treatment: their population exploded exponentially in a short period of time & killed your snake by sucking her blood. It's a tough way to learn this lesson. I'd be putting all my other snakes on white paper towels for a while, immediately giving them supervised soaks in mildly soapy water (Ivory) & quickly investing in some "PAM" (Provent-A-Mite), as mites travel to other cages and it would be a miracle if your other snakes don't have them too. You can accidentally transport them from one cage to another on your clothes, & you should assume that you did.
I already have PAM. I've dealt with mites before. Thank you for the advice.
hotlips
New member
That's why it's SO important to quarantine, & house new snakes on white paper towels with minimalist set-up. Try taking damp paper towels & wiping down your other snakes to see if any mites show up. They hide under the chin, near the eyes or vent sometimes. Obviously they are quite tiny when young, & even hard to see when grown. I don't know off-hand the precise number of days in their reproductive cycle, but for comparison, think about rodents in the wild & what would happen without predators to eat them. I watched a documentary once about an explosion of rats that totally stripped fields of crops (it's been a while, it was some place in southeast Asia, I think?). The place was literally crawling with rats everywhere. Because with a short reproductive cycle, the babies mature, breed, & all their babies have babies...it's the same with mites...exponential population explosion! Even if you don't find mites on your other snakes, stay vigilant & treat! It doesn't take many mites for this nightmare to happen.
i checked my snakes under the chin and everywhere, included my pale orange amel corn snake. i would see mites on an orange snake.
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2008
- Messages
- 3,345
- Reaction score
- 247
- Points
- 0
- Age
- 67
- Location
- Fiji Islands South Pacific
So sorry to hear about this, and really hope you don't have any further outbreaks. I have no experience of mites (thankfully), but could this have been a hatching event? Could there have been eggs under the scales that hatched overnight?
Certainly if it were me I would be now frantically bathing every snake and treating every enclosure. You don't see any mites on your orange corn snake, but then they weren't apparent on the milk snake either. How large a collection do you have to deal with?
Certainly if it were me I would be now frantically bathing every snake and treating every enclosure. You don't see any mites on your orange corn snake, but then they weren't apparent on the milk snake either. How large a collection do you have to deal with?
No. Female mites leave the host and lay their eggs in places like tiny crevices in wood furniture or substrate. This is why PAM works even though it's only applied to the paper substrate, hides, and enclosure walls: the female mites walk on the treated surface and die, or the nymphs hatch, walk on the treated surface, and die.
Once you have a mite infestation you have to treat everything for at least six weeks after you stop finding mites on your snakes, as an egg can take up to a month to hatch after being laid.
An infestation scares the bejeezus out of me. I've been through two and my collection was much smaller then. Today I have over 100 snakes, including adult retics. Even using the less-expensive options for making a permethrin-based mite spray would be expensive in time and resources to treat.