Experience with provent-a-mite

[AntTheDestroyer]

Now that I have calmed a bit I feel it is worth documenting my experience for future members. Also there is some updates dealing with the manufacturer. Anyway due to being sent a wild caught garter when I ordered a captive bred snake, there was evidence of mites in my home. On the urging of others I used provent-a-mite as a preventive measure. One of the snakes that's enclosure was treated was a young(less than six months old) California red sided garter snake.

I was very careful about this enclosure due to his age. I look everything out of the cage, put the enclosure outdoors, and sprayed the enclosure and aspen substrate lightly. I then left the enclosure outside in the hot Colorado sun for an hour and half to two hours just to be sure it was properly dried. Then I inspected the substrate just to double check the dryness. After I was satisfied I replaced the snake and all the clean décor.

The next night I walked into my office to find my snake out much later than usual. I was surprised at this and inspected closer to see that he was failing around, lifting his head, and opening his mouth. Again on the urge of others I removed him from the cage and washed his skin off to remove as much of the chemicals as possible. I then put him in an entirely different enclosure with untreated substrate.

The next morning I awoke to find the poor little guy dead. As you can imagine I was very upset. After doing a bit more research I found that more than one experienced owner had had this same issue at some point with young garters. I decided to email the manufacturer of provent-a-mite to maybe get them to acknowledge this issue and maybe get some of my lost money back.

First they asked me to recount how I applied the product so they could tell me what I did wrong. This was a little frustrating as they were already trying to pass blame on to me with no information. I responded with a similar but more detailed description as above. Finding no issue with my methods they then tried to come up with situations that were no where near what I had done to explain that I had killed my pet.

I am sure some people have misused this product before at the detriment of their pets, but I can assure that is not the case here. I worked in a chemistry laboratory for six years and handled chemicals far more noxious than provent-a-mite, so I understand how important following directions can be. I followed their vague directions as well as anyone could and still ended up with a dead snake.

I will never use this product ever again and would recommend that no one use it on young garters. The reply of the company shows how little they care about the consumers and I would recommend you stay away from any of their products.

[Tommytradix]

ive been using it as a preventive once a month with full bedding changes for about a year and still use it. i have successfully used it with plenty of babies. this to me seems like a rare situation where a single animal was effected. i currently have 62 garters living on dry provent-a-mite with no isssues. in the spring that number grows to well over 100 at any given time. im just sharing my experience with this product cause imo if used properly it does its job.
i remove all garters and water bowls from the room and i do a one second spray on all my enclosures and let dry with windows open for an hour. sorry to hear about your bad experience and it sounds like you did a more thorough job than i did

[d_virginiana]

Like I said in an earlier post... It's kind of like vaccines. There's a very small chance that something will go wrong even if you do everything correctly, but it generally helps rather than hurts (coming from someone who was almost killed by routine vaccines but still recommends them). It seems like you did everything right, but just got very unlucky.

[AntTheDestroyer]

I think that if I would have known that there were any risk of an outcome this brutal l I would not have risked it. That is the point of this thread to at least give others an real world account of what could happen. I understand what you are saying about vaccines, but I don't think it fits in this situation. While mites are aggressive they are by no means certain death to the snake and especially not thousands. I would be curious to know the amount of captive snakes that die from mites versus provent-a-mite, but I am sure the company does its best not to release this info.

[guidofatherof5]

You can say what you want because of this experience but the success of and the use of this product have save countless collections of reptiles. I too have lost snakes using the product but feel it is the best product on the market and the most effective.

[AntTheDestroyer]

Guido my concern is not that it doesn't kill mites and it may be safe for larger snakes, but can you say that on no uncertain terms that it is safe for young garter snakes? I just feel like after the fact I find my situation has happened to more than just me, then maybe people should know about it. I don't want to start an argument I just want to share my experience, especially after the treatment I received from what is supposed to be a company solely concerned with reptile health.

[guidofatherof5]

I respect your concern and certainly don't want an argument either.

[Tommytradix]

i told you i use it monthly on babies that range from a day old to 4 months old.

[d_virginiana]

From what I've seen on this site and others, the product is generally completely safe. With ANY chemical you use on ANY animal, there is going to be the risk of an adverse reaction. Some individuals are just more sensitive than others, and there's no way to tell whether or not they are. In this case, the only animal I've seen it very occasionally cause problems with is very small garters... and even with them it only happens a minute percentage of the time. I think this is down to plain crappy luck.

[AntTheDestroyer]

It was certainly unlucky. All in all I think everyone's experience is valid.

[d_virginiana]

It was certainly unlucky. All in all I think everyone's experience is valid.

Oh, absolutely. I think it's a good thing to have threads like this so people know that there is a very unlikely chance of it happening, and what to do immediately if they see the signs that their snake is having a reaction.

[Albert Clark]

It's a sad state of affairs what happened Ant and you know how heartfelt I was. I remember using Pam years ago on enclosures with some of my adult garters and having one of my male garters being exposed. He suffered some neurological symptoms but pulled through over time. Yes, I think the manufacturers should specify on the can and in the literature about dosage requirements for snakes 0 to 1year of age one way or the other. Until your experience I always thought there was only one dose requirement. But when you think about it pediatric doses are different than adult doses. Again, I apologize and am glad we all got through this. Chalk it up to a learning experience, I have.

[jere000]

I would like to chime in here unfortunately I was a little late, I use Hartz ultra guard flea and tick powder for dogs or cats works fine.I simply pull everything out of the cage no bedding hides water dishes anything.I put a light dusting of the powder in the cage and put the snake back in, I leave them in the bare cage with the powder for a week never had an incident and it kills the mites extremely quick.

[d_virginiana]

I wouldn't advise using anything on reptiles that isn't specifically produced for reptiles... I don't know the specifics of what's in the flea powder, and if it works for you you can keep doing it, but IMO it's dangerous to recommend non-reptile products especially when it's not something a lot of people have experience with.
(ie: Betadine isn't a reptile-specific product, but hundreds and even thousands of reptile keepers use it, so there's a lot of info on it. If only one person has experience using something it's just not enough info to recommend it, especially when you're dealing with toxins)

Not trying to bash you or start an argument, just putting a disclaimer out there in case someone who isn't very experienced is reading the thread.

[jere000]

I understand I was hesitant myself when I tried it.It worked though no issues, other than that I recommend reptile spray above PAM.Never trusted PAM have heard many cases of snakes passing away.

[d_virginiana]

I understand I was hesitant myself when I tried it.It worked though no issues, other than that I recommend reptile spray above PAM.Never trusted PAM have heard many cases of snakes passing away.

What species do you know of that have died from PAM? So far I've only heard about it in garters. I thought it had something to do with them having crazy high metabolisms for snakes and extra-sensitive kidneys (same reason they can be so sensitive to salts), so I'd be interested in the other species and how often it happens to see if garters really are more sensitive to it.

[jere000]

I have heard of it happening with ball pythons and boa several times, as well as a brazilian rainbow boa(I think a hognose a well).It happens more so then I' like, so I've never used it.This is technically all hear say at this point, as all of this was years ago when I was more active on forums and what not.