[rjmarchisi]

Is this bad? They seem to have no impact on the springtail population as they are crawling everywhere.

Rob

 

[Guest]

The mites are bad for your cultures.
Try keeping you cultures under a light, as the mites hate it.
As for getting rid of the mites, You have a challenge ahead of you.
You may try flooding the cultures (springtails float) and see if the mite float. I would then spoon the springtails out and watch for mites as you get the springtails. You may get some might eggs, you may not...

Hope this helps,

 

[Christian]

Good luck I have mites in my fruit fly..... and I am not capable of kicking they little white a....

I tried to put the two away but din't work... the sane one or always being contamining.... They not in the same room...

 

[Randy]

Yup, as Ben stated earlier, mites are definitely bad for your culture. I've had a couple of very nicely established cultures go completely bad in a matter of a couple of weeks due to mites. I'd suggest salvaging some of the adult springtails in the way Ben described, and start some new cultures.


Randy
http://www.fruitflyspecialties.com

 

[Guest]

Mites in springtails.

Hi,
I had a very nice culture in shobox going all last year and last winter I noticed the numbers slowly going down in it.I took a closer look and it was filled with the little mites like you have in your pic.I took the whole culture out and let them enjoy a -10 night in January.I caught about 10 springtails out of my vittatus's tank and now have a couple good cultures going now.With Ben's advice I have cheapo undercabinet flour.light over them and have had no problems since with the mites. I hope you get them cleared up.I was bummed when I lost them all but I didn't have any froglets at the time that were young enough to need them so I was lucky.
Mark W.