HCA: Hermit Crab Association

So happy I came here! I was just about a picture of the funny white bugs in my crabitat. I decided to do a deepish clean today because their last big clean was more than two months ago. Those white mites are all over the place. Maybe I should just clear out the substrate instead of just spot cleaning. I don't have sand though, just coco fiber. Maybe I shall go out and get some. Everything is going to be boiled and the pooper scooper is coming out. At least I now know they're eating.

Wolf, in the mite pic, are the last two predatory? I found one walking on my glass today. Looks a lot like a food mite, but I wanted to make sure. I haven't introduced anyone new for months. Also odd timing since I upgraded and basically did a deep lean in he process two weeks ago. It was just 1, and it wasn't on a crab, so I'm not too concerned.

I dunno. I just pulled mite pics from the net to try to show the diversity. If they are on your glass and not on the crabs, you likely don't have anything to worry about. Food mites can show up at any time since they can live in your house and outside.

Just noticed this so I thought maybe I would throw in my two cents.

I was online googling through products and whatnot and came across this spray called "Mite Off". Personally, I've never used it so I don't know if it works well or even works at all, but it's something to look into since it's only like 3 dollars.

Mite off is for snake mites. I have used it for such in the past. It doesn't work from my experience.

jusgus wrote:Just noticed this so I thought maybe I would throw in my two cents.
Mite off is for snake mites. I have used it for such in the past. It doesn't work from my experience.

It's also a poison to crabs! Mites and crabs are too closely related and insecticides that could harm a mite would also cause damage or death to a hermit.

wodesorel wrote:It's also a poison to crabs! Mites and crabs are too closely related and insecticides that could harm a mite would also cause damage or death to a hermit.

Yes I'm sure it is a poison to the poor hermies. I cant use the mite stuff myself with having tarantulas and scorpion so close to my reptiles. So I try and find different ways to get rid of any kind of mites. The best way I have found is crazy amounts of cleaning i.e. new substrate, sterilizing hides ect. I don't know if you could do as much cleaning with hermies having so much sand to change all the time.

crab mites are very difficult to get rid of. The worst is that they get in past the exo and into the gills, so trying to get rid of them is next to impossible. They even time their own reproductive cycles around the crabs molting cycle....

Predator mites work well to keep them under control but they only eat the eggs and babies so you have to have them int he tank for a while.

The nice thing about crab mites is that they have to come in on a crab in order to show up in the first place. So far there is no evidence that the kind of mite that makes meals of hermits can live on anything but a live crab, and they are not native in the continental US, so there are no worries about bedding or other items infecting an established hermit crab colony like you would have with snake mites. As long as all new crabs are isolated from your main colony and are thoroughly inspected (and possibly kept isolated for 2 to 4 weeks to be extra sure) then there is very little risk of mites showing up later.

Gill mites seem to be a different species of mite than the normal "crab mite" that gets talked about so much. So far on the three dead crabs I've examined there wasn't a single mite anywhere on their bodies except the ones buried into their gills - and those were just like a tick on the back of someone's neck. It would not make sense for the same species of mite to behave so differently. We're looking at two organisms that infect crabs - at the very least. It's likely that crab mite species are regional and possibly even species specific as well.

Now, "cage mites" are a completely different story. These would be wood mites, grain mites, food mites - any type of mite that isn't making a meal directly on your critters. They are harmless and native and often aren't worth the trouble to get rid of. I have them in all of my critter tanks including the scorpions and the roaches and with the hermits, and while the are unsightly they cause no damage whatsoever and the critters who live there don't even notice them. If kept with springtails as a combo clean-up crew then their numbers never get out of hand.

the little fast white mites were on all my crabs, pp's straws and e's. They also spread quickly!

I'm starting to wonder if they become gill attached when they reach a certain maturity or just wait until a molt to get into the gills where they stay. The good news is the pred mites work great, the bad news is it only takes one infected molter to surface to re-infect the whole tank.

The gill mites must reproduce somehow, and in the PDF it says they time it with the crabs molting cycle. So if someone has any gill mites, I'm sure there's a good chance they are multiplying and infecting other crabs. I may have to do 3 to 4 ongoing pred cycles to get rid of my mites for good. If that doesn't work I'm going to do a deep clean, full quarantine pred triple whammy.

Mites would have access to the gills at any point in time. There is just a thin flexable exo draped over top of them - the gills aren't sealed in or anything and they do stick out from underneath the exo down near where their "waist" is.

Gill mites are also pink and red, and there were differing sizes on the crabs I examined so it looks like they stay on the gills from the moment the mites hatch until the mites die. I don't think it has anything to do with their life cycle as to when they latch on.

I guess all we know from that PDF for sure is they time their reproduction around molting, which would make it very difficult to ever get rid of gill mites.

kuza wrote:I guess all we know from that PDF for sure is they time their reproduction around molting, which would make it very difficult to ever get rid of gill mites.

Which PDF are you referring to? The one on hermit crab parasites has life cycles on mites of marine hermit crabs, but it states that while there are 15 known species of mites that infest the 10 species of coenobita, none have been studied in depth before.

I remember it mentioned they reproduce around the crabs molting cycle but I can't find the pdf to read it again.

kuza wrote:the little fast white mites were on all my crabs, pp's straws and e's. They also spread quickly!

I'm starting to wonder if they become gill attached when they reach a certain maturity or just wait until a molt to get into the gills where they stay. The good news is the pred mites work great, the bad news is it only takes one infected molter to surface to re-infect the whole tank.

The gill mites must reproduce somehow, and in the PDF it says they time it with the crabs molting cycle. So if someone has any gill mites, I'm sure there's a good chance they are multiplying and infecting other crabs. I may have to do 3 to 4 ongoing pred cycles to get rid of my mites for good. If that doesn't work I'm going to do a deep clean, full quarantine pred triple whammy.

Kuza, what "type" of predatory mites have you had success with? I think it's time to order some just in case.

They used to be called H.Miles but they have a new name too, I just can't recall off the top of my head. They also don't work in one shot if they don't live long enough or you have an infected molter down during it, so I'm doing 2 consecutive cycles of it this time.