# Mites!!!!



## bsr8129 (Sep 23, 2010)

I have mites lots of them


A little background. I keep all my bugs in a mini fridge in the garage. Ive had a few mites in my cultures but nothing big. I had one fruit fly culture completely crash from an over infestation of mites that was thrown away about a week ago. Now the whole fridge is crawling with them by the thousands. Now they Havnt over infested the fly cultures that are still in there but they are crawling all over the outside so bad that as I was feeding out from the cultures so many were falling off the cup I could feed them out. How can I kill the mites that are walking all over the fridge? I have tried some bird mite spray I have and it didn't seem to work that well and I tried bleach on a paper towel which kinda worked so how do I kill them. I am not overly worried about mites in my cultures as they seems to be producing fine just the ones outside.


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## Trey (Sep 10, 2008)

I would just pull out all the cultures and bleach the fridge, inside and out. Bleach the outside of the cultures also. Keep them out of the fridge for a few days and monitor them and the fridge. I would then rebel each the fridge before putting them back in.


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## frogfreak (Mar 4, 2009)

Try spraying them with vinegar.


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## scoy (Jan 22, 2013)

Once you have the mites under control try using mite paper from NEHERP as a base and change as meeded. Since I started with the paper I havent had any mites.


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

Just for the outside of the fridge? Spraying with insecticidal soap can give a 100% kill of adults, while being completely harmless...it's soap. It won't do anything for eggs, so you may need repeat treatments.

If you do not treat the source (i.e. the cultures themselves), then they will quickly return.


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## bsr8129 (Sep 23, 2010)

I don't have many or hardly all inside my current cultures they are just all over the inside of the fridge. Once I get them all killed or 90% I will be getting mite paper to control any more getting in or out of the cultures. I just have 100s crawling all over the inside of the fridge and making it out of the fridge.


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## bsr8129 (Sep 23, 2010)

So I took out all the cultures and rinsed them off with water to get rid of the mites on them. Then I turned on the fridge set to Max cold and sealed it up. The temp is currently at 9 deg hopefully freezing them all.


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