HCA: Hermit Crab Association

So I have been fighting white mites in my tank all year now. I have completely stripped and boiled everything in my tank, changed out all of the sand and can not get rid of them...what do I do now? Or where did I go wrong? This is the first time in the 3 years that I have been crabbing that I have had mites and now I can't rid of the freaky little things.

Are they just int he food and substrate or are they crab mites?Either way, if you can afford it, 2 cycled of predatory mites would do the trick. crab mites will only come back in on new crabs. Other mites will come in naturally.

Nah...these things are everywhere. Literally... they are crawling up the sides of my tanks and congregating on the outside edges and corners...I'm telling you these little things are freaky. They aren't travelling down the tank because I can't see them on the stand and they are not traveling down the light cord or anything like that either. But they are white and smaller than the head of a pin...so hard to see but see them I can.

Then I would try the predatory mites, they will be around 20-30 bucks and you should only need one treatment of them to clean up the mites you have now. But they may come back since they are natural house mites. Just look for 0.5L of STRATIOLAELAPS SCIMITUS (formerly HYPOASPIS MILES)

I would take all the decorations out of the tank and re clean them and then put them in totes, don't put them in the tank until you have the mites under wraps, you are just making more work for yourself. don't put as much substrate in your tank either if your crabs already went through a molting session, like mine do. they molt with in months of each other. this way you save on money replacing it and work to. make sure you have the right kind of mites you are dealing with, read the section about mites on here some mites are very harmful to crabs and make sure you don't need to be a bathing your crabs to kill the mites off? are these food type mites or from a new crab that you brought home? good luck, these things will hide and breed in the smallest of cracks that's why it's better just to take evrything out of the tank they don't need and have the bare basics and one hidey, that's my opinion..

Jedediah is our resident bug expert. Try dropping her a PM and see if she has a suggestion.When you deep clean, are you hosing out the tank? My guess would be that you're missing some of them in the pits and crevices of sealant in the vertical and horizontal seams or under the rim.

I'll try that CA I don't know what else to do... I hosed out the entire thing...and trying to move a 66 gallon long by yourself is a chore. but to be honest I don't know where they came from but they are only on and in the tank. I'm at a loss as to what to do next.

I'm telling you what to do, 20-30 bucks is worth piece of mind and the hours and hours and hours you're going to spend trying to get rid of them. Predatory mites will stick around as long as their are other mites to feed on, then they go away. I've used predatory mites multiple times and there is no better solution, period. The only issue is mite that are in your natural environment will come back once all the preds are gone, so if you like in a bad area for it, you may have to do this once a year.

Kuza, the problem that I have with the predatory mites is that right now I don't have the 20-30 bucks to spend on buying mites. if you'll read my thread in clicks and chirps you'll see what all i'm going through right now and have been going through lately. I don't have any spare money laying around right now. it's cheaper for me to spend $12 bucks and pick up new sand and completely clean out my tank than it is for me to buy mites and pay for the shipping on them.

ah ok, nvm then

yeah... so you see my problem? I didn't know if there was anything besides the predatory mites that I could do....maybe i'll just was all of my crabs (there will be a first time for everything) and set them up in a temporary 10 gallon while I bleach and spray out my 66 gallon... then let that big sucker sit out in the sun for a day or two.... as long as I rinse well and let the tank air out it should be alright shouldn't it?

While you can sterilize the tank and toys, you can't sterilize the crabs. It may take a couple of weeks worth of washing every day to ensure there aren't any mites left in the crabs shells.So you may want to keep the crabs in a temporary tank for up to 2 weeks with regular washings until you are sure they are mite free before returning them to the main tank.

that's why I said do the bare basic in a temp tank, no decorations ect. get the stuff clean , yes you can use bleach and rinse a lot, let dry and bag it up and don't use it til you have them gone or if you can pitch everything start over, I tell ya I have had ants and gnats several times and they are just as bad to get rid of to. my wood I pitched cause I wanted to make sure the gnats didn't lay eggs. everything else was bleached and rinsed and air dried.I would clean out my 55 gal and think I had it all squeaky clean get every thing back and later i would see a gnat! we are fighting ants big time, I keep looking at my tank making sure i don't have them again, cause once they get there they are very hard to get rid of cause you can't use pesticides and you have to change the substarte out to cause they will make it their home.. crabs are hard to take care of, I was lucky and never had mites!

I think that is what I am going to do... just set up the temp and trash most of whats in my tank and boil the rest a few times before re-adding it. bleach the tank and air dry it outside that way I can spray it with the water hose.

I did the hypoaspis miles too and they really helped !!