Treble and Clef's Mite Diary
Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2020 1:50 am
I have been crabbing for about a year, and this is my first experience with finding bugs in my tank. I'm not entirely sure if they are food mites, wood mites, or something completely different. But they are gross and I hate seeing them in my tank and crawling around on my crabs' shells. D: Digging through the files here, I have decided to try the unthinkable and release 10,000 "predator mites" into the crabitat!
My situation is a little unique in that I have a very small setup - 10g with one small and one large crab (Clef and Treble, respectively). I'm concerned about overrunning the tank with the predators, or that they won't eat my particular species of mite, or that I'll just do something generally wrong, so I'm pretty nervous about it! I am also both thoroughly disgusted yet morbidly fascinated in the fact that they will eventually leave the tank to hunt down other pests in the house. Sounds great in theory, but I'm putting 10k of them there myself!
I decided to document my journey for anyone else who's thinking of trying this method. I'm totally grossed out about the whole thing, so I hope it's a clean, successful sweep!
I ordered the mites today (Stratiolaelaps scimitus, formerly H. miles), they were not cheap. But I wanted to make sure I was getting the right thing. I got mine from these guys, and ordered the smallest available tube, per their advice:
https://naturalenemies.com/stratiolaela ... n-1-liter/
I should get them in about a week! In the meantime, I'm tossing a banana slice in there each night and scooping it and the surrounding sub out after a few hours. Hoping that helps with population control until the "big guns" show up.
I'll update the thread as I go - any and all advice is appreciated!
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My situation is a little unique in that I have a very small setup - 10g with one small and one large crab (Clef and Treble, respectively). I'm concerned about overrunning the tank with the predators, or that they won't eat my particular species of mite, or that I'll just do something generally wrong, so I'm pretty nervous about it! I am also both thoroughly disgusted yet morbidly fascinated in the fact that they will eventually leave the tank to hunt down other pests in the house. Sounds great in theory, but I'm putting 10k of them there myself!
I decided to document my journey for anyone else who's thinking of trying this method. I'm totally grossed out about the whole thing, so I hope it's a clean, successful sweep!
I ordered the mites today (Stratiolaelaps scimitus, formerly H. miles), they were not cheap. But I wanted to make sure I was getting the right thing. I got mine from these guys, and ordered the smallest available tube, per their advice:
https://naturalenemies.com/stratiolaela ... n-1-liter/
I should get them in about a week! In the meantime, I'm tossing a banana slice in there each night and scooping it and the surrounding sub out after a few hours. Hoping that helps with population control until the "big guns" show up.
I'll update the thread as I go - any and all advice is appreciated!
Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk
