Provent-a-mite can be a killer

[RAD House]

I just wanted to make people aware of a recent experience that I had with this product. 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 a respected member of the hobby 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.