AH MY SNAKE HAS MITES !!!!

One of the worst feelings any animal owner can have is discovering that their pet has parasites, whether they are internal parasites such as roundworms, tapeworms, hookworms or even giardia or if they are external parasites such as ticks or mites there is good news they can be KILLED !!!

Internal parasites need to be treated by your veterinarian using different types of dewormers depending on the particular type of worm(s) that your snake may have. In general C.B.B. (captive born and bred) snakes will not normally have internal parasites whereas W.C. (wild caught) animals can and generally will have both internal and external parasites. You will need to either prefer as fresh of a fecal sample as possible for your vet or bring in your snake to allow you vet to determine what worms they need to treat for.

External parasites i.e ticks or mites are the scourge for any reptile owner, these tiny little bugs are a nuissance and can seemingly appear out of no where. They are small but can in fact cause from just a mild irritation to your pets all the way to actual death. (this would require an extremely severe infestation and it would take a good amount of time to cause the death from either secondary infections to anemia) Again VERY good news, there is a product that will very safely and effectively erradicate external parasite very easily not only from the snake but from its enclosure and your entire collection as well. There are numerous products available on the market and I have had the unfortunate need to try most of them. I also do a lot of reptile rescue work and 95% of those animals come to me with both internal and external parasites. Below are products that I have used and what I have discovered about their use. There are a LOT more ways that people try to attack and erradicate mites and ticks but these are the ways that I have tried thus I feel comfortable writing about them for your perusal.

BLACK KNIGHT
Black Knight is without a doubt by far the BEST product I have found and used on the market for erradication of external parasites. Black Knight has been used on reptile collections for the last 15 years successfully. This product has been referred to by many top breeders as the "silver bullet" for treating snake mites. I will start with explaining how it is used. Simply take the water bowl out of the snakes cage then liberally "fog" the cage with the Black Knight spray close and cover the cage if it has a screen lid to keep the "fog" inside of the cage. While the water bowl is out of the cage clean and disinfect the bowl using something as simple as a bleach solution to remove any mites, ticks or eggs that may be on the bowls. The next day place the water bowl back in the cage and you are done !! The next time you clean out the cage you will probably notice a lot of dead ticks and mites. You may have noticed that in no point did I mention you have to remove the snake from the cage...that is NOT a misprint, why would you take the snake (the animal with all the ticks and mites on it ? ) out of the cage you are treating if you are trying to get rid of those darn little bugs ? That is how safe this product has been proven to be. Now what are my experiences with this product ? As I stated earlier I do a lot of rescue work and sometimes I have less than ideal situation in which I need to use this product i.e. sick injured or dehydrated animals. I've used this product on heavily infested animals that where less than healthy that have shown no signs of health problems after the product was used and every time I've used it all the mites and ticks have been erradicated. As for my personal collections use I spray my snake room, rat room and my entier house down once a month simply as a preventative measure not to mention that living in a townhome with common walls tends to lead to unwelcomed guests that the spray does take care of. I do have one WARNING when using this product !!!! If you house or keep reptiles that are insectivores such as chameleons geckoes etc. and you keep these insects anywhere in the building you are spraying you are going to end up with dead bugs. Remove your colonies of crickets roaches etc. from the building before you spary this product or you will wipe out the bugs you want to keep alive ! Yes I learned this the hard way LOL....
A little history about this product. It is produced by the Airosol company and they have been making it for about the last 30 years !! It was originally produced and used as an aircraft spray to help prevent the spread of exotic bugs on airplanes such as the Mediterranean fruit fly. Stewards use to walk up and down the rows of airplanes with cans of Black Knight and sprayed the plane and the passengers directly with the product. Since there is no real insecticide smell to this product most passengers assumed they where being sprayed with some sort of air freshener ! So what happened well of course eventually this information got out to the public and well to say the least it is no longer used on the airlines. The company still produces the product but instead of calling it Aircraft Airosol Spray, they now ball it Black Knight Roach Killer. Why can't you just go to the store buy this stuff if it works so well ? Marketing, cost and lack of knowledge, unfortunately as consumers our knowledge base of products basically consists of the commercials we see on television and Black Knight was never marketed that well, it did cost more than most products and people just did not know how effective it was. Overall this is the product I use and always recommend this product to anyone that asks what they should use. In fact I believe so strongly in this product it will be available for purchase from this site delivered to your door.
***SIDE NOTE I have used this product on numerous python and boa species but have never used in on venomous animals. Some viper species have noticed to show a negative although temporary nuerologic response to this product with no apparent long lasting effects. More information about this can be found on the VPI.com website where this information was found.***
Provent-A-Mite
Without a doubt Provent-A-Mite is Black Knights number one contender for the position of head honcho numero uno mite erradication products on the market !!! This product is one of the most widely known and used products in the prevention of and erradication of mites and ticks on the market and is currently the most effective product on the market specifically sold for the use of mite erradication. (Black Knight is not sold specifically for this purpose)However Provent-A-Mite does have some negatives to it, the biggest problem is that it can and most likely will KILL your reptile if you mistakingly spray it directly on your snake ! Admittedly this product can be used as a preventative by spraying the areas around your cages and its residual affects will keep mites/ticks away from your critters however if you use Black Knight to kill them all you don't need to worry about it LOL. Another negative with Provent is that you need to empty the cage clean it well and then treat the cage and new substrate put wait awhile before putting the snake back in then put the snake in and go clean and treat the cage you used to temporarily hold the snake while you where cleaning its normal cage ?? My experience with Provent-A-Mite wasn't as good as some folks have had, as I've stated before I deal with rescues that sometimes have a LOT of mite/tick problems and the amount of extra work and cleaning Prevent-A-mite creates is just not worth it not to mention it really didn't work that well for me.

If you haven't already guessed overall I would recommend using Black Knight over Provent-A-Mite and know many, many breeders that feel the same way. But I leave it up to you, I suggest trying both products and see which works best for you.