Help me! ive never seen this before?

Question

my iguana has these lil black and red bugs on him! ive had him for almost 2 months and i hold him all the time and play with him. well today ive notice he has got these bugs on him and i squished one and it kind of smeared my fingers, what are they and how do i get rid of them?

Answer 1

Those small red bugs are "Mites" they are arachnids, and could be bad if you have them in your lizard or any other reptile! But you need to take it to the doctor. Just hope your docter knows how to help reptiles/lizards!

Answer 2

As an owner you should either take your reptile to a vet or look up medicines or treatments that are alright for Iguanas.

And I'd be imagining they were "mites" or something.

It must have had them for a while if there seem to be a lot of them.

I'd also wash him with whatever you wash him with and completely clean his tank.

Answer 3

They are mites. You should take your iguana to a herp/reptile vet, he/she may need to have more then one treatment. You will need to clean, clean and reclean your iguanas enclosure, along w/ anything else inside his/her enclosure.

NATURAL CHEMISTRY Reptile Relief - Kills Mites it will kill mites on your iguana and inside enclosure (eggs), it works.

Mites and parasite are very common for new iguanas from pet stores ... I would take a fecal sample w/ you to the herp/reptile vet to check while treating the mites.

http://www.greenigsociety.org/parasites....

Hopefully you aren't using any bark, rocks, pellets for the floor covering because well all those are bad to begin w/ but you might as well switch to the safer floor coverings because the mites eggs could easily live in bark wet moisture.

BAD floor covering: bark, dirt, moss, sand, pellets are all bad ... at some point your iguana will try and l**k swallow and then possibly cause blockage which will then need to be surgically removed or possibly death ... SAFE floor covering: newspaper (unprinted), paper towels, towels, vinyl flooring, indoor/outdoor carpeting - if you have any lose fibers from the carpeting or the towels please remove and replace - unprinted newspaper if you possibly can use is safer just in case your ig likes to try and eat the newspaper some ink may contain soy

Reptile vets:

http://www.herpvetconnection.com/

http://www.arav.org/Directory.htm

http://www.anapsid.org/vets/#vetlist

Sites for you to read:

http://www.greenigsociety.org/ - http://www.iguanaden.org/ - http://www.anapsid.org/iguana/index.html

A great book to read and have on hand:

Iguanas for Dummies by Melissa Kaplan

Yahoo has some great sites for Iguana owners... these groups helped me and still help w/ questions .. if you'd like to join:

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/BabyI... - http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/Iguan...

Answer 4

they are mites most likely and they drink your iguana's blood so that is what smeared on you. They can be very tough to get rid of but here's a good page to inform you on them: http://www.anapsid.org/mites.html

you'll need to give your iguana a warm bath to help rid the mites as well as clean it's cage very well. A very affective spray in regards to killing mites is prevent-a-mite.