well for those of you who don't know i had a tremendously bad infestation of reptile mites. i treated all the animals with a reptile miticide, which basically is thyme oil, rosemary oil and clove oil. i left the tanks bare and took all the water dishes out for one week. i did give the animals water but in small containers they could only drink out of and not get into. i first took one of my city trash cans (cleaned out of course) and put all the decorative wood in the can. i let them soak for 2 hours completely submerged then took them out and rinsed them off. in the pics of the 5 gallon buckets you'll notice it is full of bedding. what i did was fill the bucket up with bedding and then fill it up with water all the way to the top. i then put a second bucket into the first one filling it up as well, to make sure all the bedding in the bottom bucket was completely submerged. i left it submerged for 2 hours as well. next i took all the cages out (this pic is only some of them) and rinsed and scrubbed them. the submerging thing is to suffocate all the mites that could be on the bedding. i will never again assume that my substrate comes without mites in it already. for now on every bedding change will get this same treatment. i have included some pics of the cages in the room to show them with bedding in them. my last post of the Reptile Room got some mixed responses on leaving the animals with a bare bottom tank. hope this helps some one out there with there mite problem.
