Morning All

I was wondering if anyone could help. I noticed last night when i was feeding my MF P cambridgei, there are small white lice in the enclosure. I checked all my other enclosures, and noticed they too were infected. At this stage there aren't many , but i want to try and stop it before it gets worse. Any advice?

As I have no knowledge of the good and bad when it comes to lice, I would consider changing the substrate. I have seen in the past that if the substrate is kept too moist it can lead to mould and other infestations which might include the introduction of mites and/or lice but I have no evidence to confirm this. So all in all, I personally will change the substrate.

Thanks Jaco,i thought that that will be the only way, but to clean and change 68 enclosures, eish!

They are not lice - they are mites. The mites usually show up when your container is too moist. Remove all tarantula boluses (poo) and let the containers dry out (i.e. stop misting) - that might solve the problem. It can be combated if you have better ventilated enclosures and use water bowls instead of constant misting. When you use water bowls, you can leave 80% of the peat dry and it will still provide a humid environment.

As the others said, yes it is most likely due to the substrate being to moist. That is usually when these boys show their faces. I would also recommend that you move those enclosures that have mites away from any other enclosure as they can spread like wildfire. They tend to come from nowhere and multiply at an incredible rate if the conditions are right.

So be careful as they sometime also infest the spider itself and then you have trouble.

Thanks for the advise peeps. I have stopped misting about two weeks ago, and all the enclosures have water bowls. Will monitor the situation and let you know.