Mite infestation?

[Melophile]

I bought a drosophilia hydei culture off of Josh's Frogs about a week ago and when I went to feed my mantises today, I noticed small white things moving; I believe they are grain mites. Will my fruit fly culture crash and die? How can I prevent them? Is it safe to feed the flies to my mantises?

Here's a video of what I'm talking about. Looks to me like they are attacking the pupa, which is definitely not a good thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEuv32Z35WE

 

[dmina]

Well mites are a part of the hobby.. No, they will not harm your mantis... Yes, eventually your cultures will crash..

but you do have quite a few more rounds of new F.F. hatchings... So with mites, you can find many posts about mites on this forum..

About once a month I take a bleach and water rag to my fruit fly shelves and the out side of the container.. it seem to keep the mite explosion down.. It is just part of this hobby... I have had my fair share of them also... I have had them in my crickets, mealworms, anything that might have a little moisture... may get mites..

 

[Krissim Klaw]

When you go to make your next culture, instead of tapping the fruit flies directly into the new culture, stick them in another cup first. Try and let the flies climb out of the old culture and sort of hop into the new cup while tapping as little as possible since you don't want to knock the mites in the new cup. Once you get a good amount in the cup, then tap the cup some shaking everyone down and hopefully causing any grainmites that made it in to fall into the bottom. Then once again let the flies crawl up and now hop into the new culture. This will help avoid transfering the mites. As soon as the new fruitfly culture starts to produce flies, rinse and repeat. Do this a few generations and you can generally eliminate the mites as long as you keep the areas you are keeping the cultures clean. I would suggest setting new cultures in a different area from your obviously infested ones.

The grainmites themselves won't be a bother to the mantises so you can stil feed, however if you do then you can end up spreading the mites to your mantis enclousures. All fruit fly cultures will eventually crash, mites just make them crash sooner because they compete with the fruit flies for the resources in the cup and can outsource them.

 

[CosbyArt]

Josh's Frogs has built a reputation on mites, seems everyone that orders from them has them in their cultures.

The mites tend to be more of a nuisance than anything, some live with it, and others will destroy cultures that have mites to prevent them from spreading. Seems everyone gets them sooner or later to a degree, so far I've been lucky (knock-on-wood).

For me when it happens though I would personally toss out the infested cultures and use some mite paper on all my mantid cups and cultures and such to get the mites back to a manageable/minimal level.