Parasites on cb animal.

Arachnomaniac19 said:

Last night I found my Linothele megatheloides (I know it's not a tarantula but I'd thought I'd get more answers here) covered in small, tick-like parasites. He had around 30-40 on him. He was captive bred and I had him for 2-3 years. He was around 3". He was dead when I found him so maybe they killed him or they were scavengers? Here's a link to what they looked like: http://electroholiker.de/?attachment_id=1330 . So my question is, will they spread to my other inverts and what are they? Thanks.

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Stan Schultz said:

Sorry for your loss.

Those are mites, probably grain mites or similar. No, they probably didn't kill the spider unless the cage is literally crawling with them, and they were all over the spider while it was still alive.

Yes, if your other cages are damp you probably have a low level population in them as well. They are everywhere, you cannot escape them.

My specialty is Theraphosids, not Diplurids, but if that were a Theraphosid tarantula I'd say you were keeping the cage too damp and experienced a mite population explosion. An equally probably explanation is that you have a residual, background population of mites that normally doesn't bother the spider. But, after the spider died and began to smell dead, the mites merely took advantage of the corpse as a food bonanza.

If you need to keep Diplurids in damp cages, consider also keeping terrestrial Isopods with them as a janitorial and pest control crew. Search for any of these terms on this or almost any other arachnid forum for much, MUCH, MUCH more information.

Isopoda
isopod
sow bug
sowbug
pill bug
pillbug
wood louse
woodlouse
roly poly

... and their plural forms.

... and maybe any of the other names mentioned in this Wikipedia article.

Hope this helps. Best of luck.

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