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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stan Schultz" data-source="post: 145318" data-attributes="member: 28438">As you may already know, mites are found almost everywhere (even Antarctica). And every time we feed our tarantulas we introduce another starter culture of them to the cage. In fact, I'd bet that there were <a href="https://www.thefreedictionary.com/commensal" target="_blank">commensal</a> mites on the tarantulas when you first acquired them.So, you can never, really, be mite free except for maybe a few moments after a complete cleaning and before you reinstall your tarantula. And ordinarily the mites in your tarantulas' cages are so few, reproduce so slowly, and die so easily that their numbers are extremely low. In fact, you may never even suspect that they're there at all. But they are. You can bet on it!But for some reason (actually, probably a number of reasons), and usually in late Winter or early Spring, mites sometimes experience a reproductive frenzy (called a "bloom") wherein they seem to overrun everything. These blooms may be intensified by dampness and an untidy cage. It's during these times that they become a serious problem to your tarantulas because they are likely to spread from one cage to another, and in large enough numbers they can and will kill a tarantula.Over more than fifty years of keeping tarantulas, and about half that time belonging to and monitoring various tarantula mailing lists and forums on the Internet, I've seen my share of discussions of tarantulas and mites. And I've seen all sorts of statements of mites not being parasitic, not being dangerous (!), and a whole host of other flat, statements of "fact," but have seen literally ZERO scientific treatments supported by collected data, and subjected to independent review to weed out bad logic, factual misstatements, and outright absurdities. The propounders of all these "old wives' tales" cannot even tell us the identities of these mites beyond "grain mites," and similar. Read what you will. But be careful of what you believe!There are several facts that many tarantula keeping enthusiasts fail to appreciate:1) As with humans, the vast majority of tarantulas do NOT have to be kept in any sort of cage that mimics their natural habitat. This is covered in <a href="http://people.ucalgary.ca/~schultz/NaturalAndOrganic.html" target="_blank">Natural is Better?</a> In fact, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence strongly supports the concept that keeping pet tarantulas in "natural and organic" cages that mimic their native environment may actually be detrimental because of all the collateral, side issues. Almost all "natural and organic" arguments are based on beliefs and "iffy" presumptions, usually plagiarized from others, because almost none of those enthusiasts have ever been to a rain forest, savanna, or desert where they could examine how tarantulas survive in the wild firsthand in detail.This is especially true where humidity and dampness are involved.2) Mites are little more than an alternative kind of spider. In fact, some taxonomists have proposed the (unproven) hypothesis that they are merely the next evolutionary step derived from spiders. The only significant, practical differences between spiders in general, tarantulas in particular, and mites are the facts that spiders are generally orders of magnitude larger and therefore possess orders of magnitude larger water reserves within their bodies than mites; and spiders possess water resistant or waterproof exoskeletons that are orders of magnitude thicker and more impermeable to water loss than those of mites.3) There is no supporting evidence whatsoever that any kinds of mites are useful in a tarantula's cage. Anything you've heard to the contrary has not been tested and verified, and is complete conjecture on the part of the propounder, or the parroting of statements made by other equally uninformed people. Similarly, all practical evidence extremely strongly suggests that no tarantulas NEED any sort of mite living in their cages for the tarantulas' well being. In effect, at best, mites are useless baggage. But they can be much, much worse.Having said all that as a preamble, and to answer your question, please read this webpage: <a href="http://people.ucalgary.ca/~schultz/mites07.html" target="_blank">Mighty Mites</a>.________________________________________________________________________________________In religion and politics [and arachnoculture] people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.--Mark Twain [Autobiography ch. 78 (1959) with my insertion]________________________________________________________________________________________</blockquote>

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