Mantida
Well-known member
Well, I finally got hit with my first ever experience with the oh so pesky mite.
Today I walked up to one of the d. melanogaster cultures Rebecca sent me, 'twas potato mix. There were little dots all over the styrofoam plug, and upon inspection I saw that they were moving... I looked down into the culture to see a huge mass of tiny dots moving around! They were reddish brown, and my first thought was 'MITES!' I quickly discarded the culture.
The sucky thing is, I had made some medium from Mikhail's guide a few days ago, and if they were infected I'd have to make them all over again, even though they were fresh. :angry: So I looked inside both the new and shiny d. melanogaster and d. hydei cultures I had made, and yup, I saw at least one mite crawling around in each. I separated them from the original place they were placed and put them downstairs. I have yet to make new medium, as I don't have any time, but have a few questions before I start and discard the old cultures.
1) When do mites start heavily infecting cultures? A week? A few days?
2) If the culture is not heavily infested yet, can I use some of the existing flies in the infected cultures to start the new ones or even if the culture is not heavily infected, is it still too late (i.e. the mites have already laid eggs on the flies or are on them).
3) How long can these mites (grain mites I think) survive without the medium for food?
4) What exactly makes mites so bad? I know they shorten the life of the culture by eating the medium along with the flies. Is this it, or do they eat the maggots too or something like that?
5) I am 99.9% sure that mites can't affect/hurt mantids but need a confirmation. Anyone?
6) I also keep lizards and hermit crabs. Since these are not the blood-sucking kind of mites, my other animals are safe, correct?
And questions that my mom is wondering about and wants me to find out -
1) Will they get into the surrounding area, i.e. carpet, etc. and last only a few days because there's no grain around for them to feed off of?
2) Can they bite? (doubt it since they're grain mites, but mites ARE mites)
3) Do they get into your hair, clothes, etc. for a short period of time?
I am aware of mite paper and will be getting it in the future to ward off any future colonizing mites until I can get rid of them completely and stop using the paper. I do not know where they came from, as I emailed Rebecca about them and she looked into her cultures and did not see any mites. Maybe they liked the potato mix a lot. :blink: But there were LOADS in the potato mix, not just fifty or a hundred, I'm guessing a thousand or even more, but only a few in the ones that I had made a few days earlier. Also an old d. hydei culture I had (that's starting to stink) has no mites whatsoever (at least, from what I see). And, all these cultures were piled next to each other, so I would think that all of them would be infected with the same number of mites.
Any help'd be appreciated as I will now end this long, long post...
Today I walked up to one of the d. melanogaster cultures Rebecca sent me, 'twas potato mix. There were little dots all over the styrofoam plug, and upon inspection I saw that they were moving... I looked down into the culture to see a huge mass of tiny dots moving around! They were reddish brown, and my first thought was 'MITES!' I quickly discarded the culture.
The sucky thing is, I had made some medium from Mikhail's guide a few days ago, and if they were infected I'd have to make them all over again, even though they were fresh. :angry: So I looked inside both the new and shiny d. melanogaster and d. hydei cultures I had made, and yup, I saw at least one mite crawling around in each. I separated them from the original place they were placed and put them downstairs. I have yet to make new medium, as I don't have any time, but have a few questions before I start and discard the old cultures.
1) When do mites start heavily infecting cultures? A week? A few days?
2) If the culture is not heavily infested yet, can I use some of the existing flies in the infected cultures to start the new ones or even if the culture is not heavily infected, is it still too late (i.e. the mites have already laid eggs on the flies or are on them).
3) How long can these mites (grain mites I think) survive without the medium for food?
4) What exactly makes mites so bad? I know they shorten the life of the culture by eating the medium along with the flies. Is this it, or do they eat the maggots too or something like that?
5) I am 99.9% sure that mites can't affect/hurt mantids but need a confirmation. Anyone?
6) I also keep lizards and hermit crabs. Since these are not the blood-sucking kind of mites, my other animals are safe, correct?
And questions that my mom is wondering about and wants me to find out -
1) Will they get into the surrounding area, i.e. carpet, etc. and last only a few days because there's no grain around for them to feed off of?
2) Can they bite? (doubt it since they're grain mites, but mites ARE mites)
3) Do they get into your hair, clothes, etc. for a short period of time?
I am aware of mite paper and will be getting it in the future to ward off any future colonizing mites until I can get rid of them completely and stop using the paper. I do not know where they came from, as I emailed Rebecca about them and she looked into her cultures and did not see any mites. Maybe they liked the potato mix a lot. :blink: But there were LOADS in the potato mix, not just fifty or a hundred, I'm guessing a thousand or even more, but only a few in the ones that I had made a few days earlier. Also an old d. hydei culture I had (that's starting to stink) has no mites whatsoever (at least, from what I see). And, all these cultures were piled next to each other, so I would think that all of them would be infected with the same number of mites.
Any help'd be appreciated as I will now end this long, long post...
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