Mites???

[MasterOfColdBloods]

I know this isn't about WD's but...Today I picked up my baby Green Basilisk Emerald and found a mite crawling on his head, and I sprayed him and the tank with Mite Off, so will he be ok now, I’m not sure he has internaly parasites. He is also in the cage with my "very tame" Chinese Water Dragon and he’s a beautiful bright green and he is very healthy but I don’t want Emerald to give the mites to Merlin so I sprayed the tank with mite off do you think that will kill all the mites.

[dragosmom]

Mites are external parasites and don't mean that your basilisk has internal parasites. It DOES mean that your basilisk inhabited conditions that were favorable to passing both internal and external parasites to it at some point in it's life. If infected, it will pass them along to your other cage inhabitants. It is extremely difficult to entirely eliminate internal parasites from reptiles because of the captive conditions under which we keep them. There are many different types of internal parasites and several of them are "direct" life cycle worms. They are present in 3 different life cycle stages in your enclosure and can be passed from reptile to reptile and reinfect treated reptiles by contact with feces and contaminated water sources. A good general rule is to worm your dragon once per year and sanitize the cage thoroughly at the same time. While this usually doesn't entirely eliminate the parasites, it helps to keep the parasitic load to an acceptable level. Hope this helps you a little.

[Pooka]

Are you sure it was a mite? I thought pooka had reptile mites but it turned out to be a wood mite of some sort that did not bother reptiles. Both basilisks and water dragons are fine scaled reptiles, as such, they are nearly immune to mites. Don't take that as "they are immune" it's just that mites have a really hard time feeding off of a fine scaled lizard. Make 100% sure before you go using a chemical agent of any sort in your viv, no need to subject your animals to another man-made chemical if its not absolutely nessecary.

[wdm]

good advice. I don't think ( well not often anyway )
anywho as far as I can tell even chemicals and what not that say reptile save don't seem to have been tested on waterdragons, which seem to be more succeptable
to the affects of them. I use very few chemicals in the girls home, just stick to boiling water (after all burnt hands beats sick dragons). What chemicals I do use i usally use a small bit and see how they react trying to advoid to much damage. If they are fine with it I use it if they act like it bothers them at all then its on the no no list.