Do I have mites in my cultures?

[Nai87]

How do you tell if you actually have mites? There are little white dust-like powder forming in clumps that when looked closely, seem to resemble a tiny egg with 2 antennas. None of them move though. They just seem to be clumped on the sites of the container as well as on the coffee filter.

I started this culture with about 100-200 flies and its been running for about 3 weeks.

I'm not sure if my eyes are deceiving me, but I could have sworn that I saw one move when a FF was stepping on it, but that only happened once.

I guess the big question is, do mites move around in the containers? If so, can you see them moving with the naked eye?

[Jayson745]

Seeing them move really depends on your vision. Its pretty hard to see, but yea you can see it. It might just be little bits of mold or something. Mabey have a peak with a magnifing glass to be sure?

[bruce]

Just an opinion,
Assume you always have mites in your cultures, its just a matter of culturing the flies quicker then the mites and disposing of them usually before four weeks. There are MANY referances to mites in the search function, but again the thought is assume they are there, practice good prevention (mite paper, sprays and ff culture rotation).
And dendroboard has many older posts on the topic as well as sites where you would buy ff.
I would appreciate anyones thoughts on the topic if they assume they do not have mites.
B.