My daughter’s cat likes to sleep on top of the snake’s tank. So I was changing Mushroom’s water and when I reached in to get his water dish, my arm was covered in fleas. So I guess tomorrow I’ll be getting fresh bedding and cleaning and disemfecting the tank. All the cats have recently been treated for fleas but I’m considering getting comfortis for this cat as he is a fluffy long hair and I’m not sure how well the topicals work on him.
Poor snake! Mushroom is an adorable name. =) What type/colour of snake?
Fortunately I’m pretty sure fleas can’t feed off reptiles, but they must be a nuisance for her anyway. I would recommend the Comfortis for the fluffy guy, will probably work better. You know though, if you have fleas in the snake tank, you most likely have fleas everywhere else …might be good to get some carpet/furniture spray and give everything you can a good wash too.
How recently have they been treated? Flea treatments work by making the cat in hospitable and killing fleas so you have to wait until the treatment cycles through all the stages of the the flea to kill them all. Any edible pet will keep the fleas around longer.
Mushroom is a corn snake that I got from Lauraruffian, a Cother, last August. He’s kind of a coral color with orange diamond shaped markings. Lauruffian knows the technical name for his coloring. He’s my daughter’s snake but she is away right now so I am taking care of him.
The cats were all treated with generic front line about a week ago. The dogs have been treated with Bravecto.
Try Revolution on the cats. It’s high, but works well for me when frontline seems to be a cocktail at happy hour or the damned fleas.
And yes, I think you might have to bomb the house and spray the yard as well.
I am actually sure of it.
And then repeat in 3 weeks.
It’s very hard to get the fleas, and their eggs out of rugs, and padded furniture. You’ll know you have fleas in the rug when you get bites on your feet and ankles. Those bites really itch too, unless I have an allergy to them.
If they’re in the rugs, then you’ll have to retreat every 2 to 3 weeks, and probably repeat one or two more times. The eggs hatch out, and keep on coming back.
I don’t have any rugs or carpet in the house because of all the critters. I checked the cats, including the fuzzy one and found no fleas. I bathed the three dogs who haven’t been treated yet and only found a few fleas so I don’t think I have a big problem. I will treat those three dogs Tuesday. Once I clean Mushroom’s tank I think things will be under control.
Another thing that will help is to put a cheap flea collar in your vacuum bag/cannister. I usually buy one and cut it in half and throw half in there. Kills any fleas you will vacuum up.
My vet HATES comfortis. The active ingredient is a neurotoxin and in his mind, not worth the risk. Many people have had pets get very sick or die from it. He recommends revolution for cats, which also does intestinal parasites and heartworms. Most fleas now are resistant to frontline and we’re having to change our flea treatments.
Great news! Since you have no rugs, I would vacuum all of the side crevices of the rooms, with the flea color in the vacuum bag. Just in case.
Are you sure it’s fleas and not lice or some other snake-specific parasite? Seems kind of weird they’re in the snake cage but not apparently on the cat.
I’m sure its fleas. I treated the cat and got rid of his fleas and cleaned and disinfected the tank. Everybody has been treated for fleas so hopefully no more problems.
I have used Comfortis for a couple of years for my highly allergic dog with no problems. I’ve tried Bravecto on my other dogs and it has worked great. I like it because it lasts 12 weeks and gets ticks too.
Frontline doesn’t really work anymore. I recommend you look into revolution for your cats. This is s great product and it gets internal parasites as well.
Whoa, wild! And UGH. I’ve BTDT with fleas before, though not in my snake cages (crossing fingers). It really was a PITA. What knocked it out for us was Advantage.
When cleaning out the snake tank, you can use a diluted bleach solution if you want to disinfect while you take out the old shavings and such.
dungrulla, snakes get mites–they’re teeny and slow moving, very different from fleas, so it’d be hard to mix them up. Captive bred babies like mine are mite-free, but I will say the person I got my two new pairs from said they had found mites in a bad batch of aspen bedding from Petco. :eek: They were still white (meaning, no blood meals) but they still wound up stripping everything anyway to be sure. INterestingly, when they told PetSmart the first reaction was, “No! Nope, can’t be from our shavings.” THEN shortly after–once the PS tanks got infested as well–it was “OMG! This WAS a bad batch of bedding!” Weird.
supaflyskye, Mushroom is an albino (though we call them amelanistic/“amel”) corn snake that carries the recessive gene for a ladder-like pattern called motley. He’s adorable. Though wireweiners an updated pic would be awesome, jus’ sayin’. 
So far the generic Frontline, Pet Armor brand from Walmart, is working fine. I used Bravecto on my lab and heeler who tend to be flea motels so I think that has helped. I’m also discouraging the cat fr sleep in on the tank. I took out all the bedding, bagged it up and took it outside immediately. I disinfected with some stuff I got at Petsmart, it’s National Geographic brand. So 'Shroom’s cage is nice and clean. He enjoyed a nice fuzzy mouse while I cleaned his tank.
I’m horrible at posting pictures. I don’t know how to do it. 'Shroom is Cheesewhiz’s brother and they look alike.
[QUOTE=dungrulla;8230526]
Are you sure it’s fleas and not lice or some other snake-specific parasite? Seems kind of weird they’re in the snake cage but not apparently on the cat.[/QUOTE]
The reason why they are in the snake cage is because it is warm, which is a perfect environment for eggs to hatch. OP likely has a lamp, fleas like warmth… additionally… if all the animals are treated that means the fleas have nowhere to go, ergo, the snake.
I feel for you, we had the same thing happen last year except they migrated to a closet… after a few rounds of Frontline/Advantix all the animals were flea free but if you walked in the closet no joke, your legs would be black with hundreds of them and I do mean hundreds… it was like a swarm…
We ended up chucking a bomb in there grenade style and fleeing… just make sure you put the snake somewhere - are they sensitive to insecticides like other small animals are? I don’t know anything about snakes but when we bombed the house we took the rats outside (their cage) for a bit…
P.PS re: bedding and bugs… I have gotten Mites from shavings for my rats and you bet I was mad :eek: … I don’t know what type of bedding snakes need but certain types of bedding are very hostile to insects…
No, no lamp, not even a heating pad at this time as my house stays well within the required temperature for corn snaked. I keep it around 78 in the day and 72 at night. That’s the thing I like about corn snakes. The are native to the US so don’t have a lot of special requirements like the tropical snakes. I do use a heating pad in the winter though. I use aspen bedding. The insect repelling beddings like cedar and pine aren’t good for snakes.
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We had a bit of a flea issue for a while. The only thing that really works well consistently on our cat is a collar. We use Nexgard on the dogs.
Maybe try a collar for fluffy kitty?
Yup, wireweiners is correct–things like pine shavings are huge no-nos in snakes. The pine oil causes neurological damage in reptiles. :eek: My husband had a very panicked moment (and I a mild one) when I told him that when he happily came back from cleaning out the ball python’s tank saying he’d used some of our extra horse shavings for the bedding. He changed it back to aspen in a big hurry, and thankfully the time the snake was on the pine was pretty brief so no harm was done.
BTW, just for visual reference, here’s a picture of Mushroom’s big sister Izzy when she was about the same age. Here she is now She’s amelanistic, like Mushroom. 
