Mites in with Springtail Colony

Hey y'all

I have a small springtail enterprise at my house. I keep my 'tails on sifted potting soil, and occasionally get nematodes in with them. They are housed in 8oz delis with zero ventilation. Any delis with 'todes get put on a separate shelf until they're gone. Seems the 'tails out-eat them very easily.

Today, while going through the colonies, one deli had zero springtail nymphs inside. There were adults jumping around, and a healthy number of them. I wasn't worried at first because the youngest are so tiny that I can only see them if they're clustered together. I took a second look and noticed little brownish-red mite looking bugs in with the 'tails. They are about 1/4 the size of a full grown springtail.

After looking up a description of Hypoaspis miles, my mites seem to match. Though with millions of different mite species, I can't really be sure.

I have this deli wrapped in a plastic bag, as it looks like they can pass through the seam between deli cup and lid. Don't want them infecting anything else in case they are worse then H. miles.


Reason for inquiring: I have an explosion of fungus gnats at my house, and sticky traps are all that help to keep them in check. They smell awful and look just as bad. If I did happen to contract a random population of H. miles, has anyone here successfully kept them for future mite/gnat outbreaks?

I can get pictures soon, as I have a USB microscope, but that won't be for a day or two at least. Until then, speculate!

Fungus gnats can be eliminated in a few days by depriving them of all food sources.

The Snark said:

Fungus gnats can be eliminated in a few days by depriving them of all food sources.

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Agreed, but I have a lot of plants. That's their main food source, the roots. I've already reduced watering, and now that it's warm enough, I'm moving plants outside. The first batch of jettisoned plants nearly died, so I'm being more careful.

The biggest source the fungus gnats have, is my full planted Exo-terra. It's an 18"x18"x24" tall, and I've been letting it dry out a lot. If the mites I have are truly H. miles, I'd love to rehome them into that Exo-terra. I can always replace the springtails from in there, but the plants, not so much.

Got gecks? If you were living around here I'd suggest watering and freshening up the Exo-terra, give it the lights the plants love, and install a half dozen geckos for however long it takes three full generations of the flies to develop. That should wipe out every last one. Then just toss in a tokay to get rid of the other geckos.

I have a feeling those flies in their various forms are hardier than a harsh fly killing environment most plants could tolerate. Around here the flies live in the untrapped drain pipes. Every once in a while I get pissed off and dump a box of baking soda in each drain then pour in a cup of vinegar or acetic acid. Helps get rid of drain bad breath too.

The Snark said:

Got gecks? If you were living around here I'd suggest watering and freshening up the Exo-terra, give it the lights the plants love, and install a half dozen geckos for however long it takes three full generations of the flies to develop. That should wipe out every last one. Then just toss in a tokay to get rid of the other geckos.

I have a feeling those flies in their various forms are hardier than a harsh fly killing environment most plants could tolerate. Around here the flies live in the untrapped drain pipes. Every once in a while I get pissed off and dump a box of baking soda in each drain then pour in a cup of vinegar or acetic acid. Helps get rid of drain bad breath too.

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This is very similar advice as I got on dendroboard. I asked dart frog people what they do with a fungus gnat explosion, and replied "Hey, free frog food!"

Canada doesn't really have small voracious predators. Can you ship me some geckos?

They are certainly "mite shaped". And tiny. Actually, these could ride tiny things. Smaller than springtails, these are mites of my bin.

At approximately 30x zoom, these are in the lip of a standard 8oz deli cup:
[YOUTUBE]NXlaGhbtF4A[/YOUTUBE]


And at approximately 230x zoom, same deli:
[YOUTUBE]rcv1ID9CKaE[/YOUTUBE]


YouTube fullscreen, and you'll get some pretty good details.

They don't seem to have the ability to escape from the deli cup. The lid seams together nicely, but allows a little bit of space for these guys. Also, still no small springtails in this bin. Only adults are left, and I haven't seen any springtail eggs. Seems that this particular colony will crash for sure, unless I dig out each hop-happy adult one by one.

Err, uhh... enjoy?!

They look like the mites I have over here, I suspected they were Hypoaspis so I sent them to a lab and it was verified but they said they didn't have time to take to sps level. The prob with the fungus gnat larvae and the mites is that the mites usually stay on or close to the surface while the gnat larvae can go deeper, I don't know if the mites would go for them anyway and I think the adult flies are too big. I've recommended this for people with fungus gnat problems http://www.amazon.com/Mosquito-Dunks-116-12-8-Ounce-Quick/dp/B0001LE1VC but last time I checked, I couldn't get anybody to try it. It's a bacteria but people are still skeptical it will kill their Ts and other stuff, a hard-wired reaction imo. But according to the label, it should be just fine but true, it doesn't say anything about Ts and centipedes. Says it's harmless to fish and that says a lot imo.

Galapoheros said:

They look like the mites I have over here, I suspected they were Hypoaspis so I sent them to a lab and it was verified but they said they didn't have time to take to sps level. The prob with the fungus gnat larvae and the mites is that the mites usually stay on or close to the surface while the gnat larvae can go deeper, I don't know if the mites would go for them anyway and I think the adult flies are too big. I've recommended this for people with fungus gnat problems http://www.amazon.com/Mosquito-Dunks-116-12-8-Ounce-Quick/dp/B0001LE1VC but last time I checked, I couldn't get anybody to try it. It's a bacteria but people are still skeptical it will kill their Ts and other stuff, a hard-wired reaction imo. But according to the label, it should be just fine but true, it doesn't say anything about Ts and centipedes. Says it's harmless to fish and that says a lot imo.

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Dunks: Got some problems there. The European Food Safety Authority wrote up a pretty damning report. http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/2540.pdf
Then the biggest proponent of how safe Bt is are those wonderful environmentalists at Monsanto. You can add to that the evidence has been slowly stacking up that Bt is nowhere near as safe as claimed with a number of die offs attributed to it. Check the citations at the bottom on the wiki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_thuringiensis

(The facts juggling done to assure the stuff is safe is resembling the climate change deniers hedge, dodge and smoke screen ploys. That Euro report has found holes all over the place. The indisputable fact that the agrobiz owns and operates the US Gov places all US research in a very questionable light.)

Thanks for the replies!

I'd be worried the mites couldn't do a good job too, and then I'd have two unwanted creatures to deal with. I'm less interested in using chemicals that have controversial pdfs about them. For now, I have the mite bin quarantined in a bag, away from all other life in my house. I fed the springtails in that bin today, and there are still no youngens to be found. The adult springtails are 4x bigger than these mites, so there's no contest there.

Also, my biggest source for fungus gnats, is my Exo-terra tank, and it has some nice life growing in there. I have a few mosses and lichens coming up, and changing that environment too much, might be an issue. I like the small predator idea, and was thinking of soil centipedes. I can find WC ones in... well, anywhere with soil. I've considered releasing a handful of them into the tank, and they'd be fun to watch.

An enclosure from long ago had both springtails and centipedes (anypede? manypede? may not have been a true centipede species), and they would curb each other quite well. Every two weeks, they'd ballast their populations. I'd get to go "Oooh, a centipede week! lookit em all!" but after they'd feast on most 'tails, their numbers would dwindle...

Tiny, many-legged sheep and wolves, I tell ya...

The Snark said:

Dunks: Got some problems there. The European Food Safety Authority wrote up a pretty damning report. http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/2540.pdf
Then the biggest proponent of how safe Bt is are those wonderful environmentalists at Monsanto. You can add to that the evidence has been slowly stacking up that Bt is nowhere near as safe as claimed with a number of die offs attributed to it. Check the citations at the bottom on the wiki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_thuringiensis

(The facts juggling done to assure the stuff is safe is resembling the climate change deniers hedge, dodge and smoke screen ploys. That Euro report has found holes all over the place. The indisputable fact that the agrobiz owns and operates the US Gov places all US research in a very questionable light.)

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That was some interesting reading but I didn't see any big problems, only, "maybe this", "maybe that", "low risk to terrestrial arthropods", inconclusive it contributed to colony collapse disorder, speculation, etc., "low risk", "low risk", over and over and over again. It actually sounded safer than I thought it would. The study was also on the subspecies kurstaki instead of the israelensis used in mosquito dunks, I don't know if it makes a diff though, sounds like nobody really does going by the studies, so "inconclusive" riddled. I don't trust these guy's either though, playing around with nature, don't know exactly what they are doing, I wish Monsanto would leave my food alone, I'm going heirloom if there's any left when I move, have some good seed sources, sounds like fun to me, work to others. Edfeofthefreak, I don't know how well springtails really do with fungal issues, my guess is that it's not that great, even with thousands of them, they're so tiny. They might be hyped up but, I don't know.

I'll admit, I haven't given that .pdf more than a glance, but that's cuz I'm at work. I'll give a good read tomorrow night.

The springtails aren't an issue, as I farm them. If using mosquito dunks kills off every living animal in the tank, I can reseed, or live without animal life in that tank. Now that it's warm enough outside, I've considered exiling the tank to the balcony, leave the doors open, and make sure to water it. Natural predators will find those fungus gnats, and when I bring it back inside, I'll have new microfauna to play with.

I'm learning a lot about the spread and containment of infectious diseases as an extension of tarantula keeping... who knew?

Introduce the mites and if they get out of control introduce Ladybugs. And when I say introduce, I mean an overwhelming population of them. Bonus point because if you release the Ladybugs they're likely to stick around and do cleanup duty on any aphids or plant infesting mites.