# Sawdust Mites!



## Grond (Jun 17, 2008)

Been cleaning out my mice today and there appears to be boatloads of little black mites in the sawdust!

Has anyone else had this experience and what the hell are they!


----------



## haunted-havoc (Aug 6, 2009)

i know they are a form of arachnid and they really arnt good for anything they are a parasite. past this i am not sure

best way to get rid of them is to remove all substrate and bin it, wash everything that is washable, like plastics in a weak bleach solution and give give all of your mice a warm bath.

mites are very closely related to nits, infact they are the same species just a different genus

there are over 45,000 species of mite that are currently know and this is said to be around 5% of the actual species. (source:Mite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

so actually finding what genus it is is very difficult

sorry cant be much more help


----------



## Grond (Jun 17, 2008)

haunted-havoc said:


> i know they are a form of arachnid and they really arnt good for anything they are a parasite. past this i am not sure
> 
> best way to get rid of them is to remove all substrate and bin it, wash everything that is washable, like plastics in a weak bleach solution and give give all of your mice a warm bath.
> 
> ...


Strangely, they don't seem to be on the mice, just in the sawdust!


----------



## haunted-havoc (Aug 6, 2009)

its better to be safe than sorry, its like nits sometimes you cant see them but might have them.

they can lay thier eggs under the skin as all forms of mites can, trust me in primary school a guy had this, they were hatching in the middle of lesson, he was in great pain


----------

