External signs: mites and ticks you can actually see
The external parasites can be found if you look in the right places. Snake mites are tiny, round and dark or reddish, and they gather where skin is thin and protected: around the eyes, in the fold under the chin, along the edges of scales and around the vent. Part the scales gently under bright light, and check your own hands after handling, since mites show up as specks that move. The water bowl is the other witness: a snake carrying mites soaks for long, uncharacteristic hours to drown them, and drowned mites collect as dark specks at the bottom of the bowl. Ticks are larger and easier — single, firmly attached, and most likely on a wild-caught or outdoor-kept animal. Raised scales, retained shed in patches and restless behaviour complete a picture that, once seen, is hard to unsee.
Internal signs: the pattern of a reptile fading
Internal parasites — worms and microscopic gut organisms — announce themselves indirectly, through the animal's accounts not balancing. The classic pattern is weight loss despite an appetite that stays good: the reptile eats with enthusiasm and thins anyway, because part of every meal is feeding something else. Droppings change character — runny where they were formed, unusually foul, sometimes containing mucus, undigested food, or, occasionally, visible worms. Energy and condition fade in parallel, colours dull, and a young animal may simply stop growing at the rate its feeding should produce. Any one of these signs has other explanations, from temperatures to stress, which is why the pattern matters more than any single item: appetite up, weight down, droppings wrong is the combination that should end in a faecal sample, not in feeding more.
Why guessing fails, and the test that settles it
Owners often respond to the fading pattern by changing foods, adding supplements or treating blindly for the parasite they have read about most. The problem is that the common internal parasites are distinguished under a microscope, not by symptoms — several produce near-identical pictures, and the right response to one is wasted effort on another. A faecal test, run by a vet or their laboratory on a fresh sample, identifies what is actually present and whether numbers are trivial or worth treating. Collect a fresh dropping in a clean sealed container, refrigerate it if the appointment is not the same day, and take it with you. The test is inexpensive, painless and decisive, and it converts a month of guesswork into a plan.
Quarantine and hygiene while you work it out
Parasites travel — on hands, on shared tools, in shared baths and decor — so containment runs alongside diagnosis. Any new reptile should live in quarantine, in a separate enclosure with its own equipment, for a period of weeks and until a faecal test has come back clear; this is doubly important with wild-caught animals. Handle the quarantined or suspect animal last, wash hands between animals, and keep its enclosure simple: paper substrate you can change completely, minimal decor you can scrub. If mites are confirmed anywhere in a collection, assume the neighbouring enclosures need checking too, since mites wander impressively far for something so small. Quarantine feels like bureaucracy until the day it saves the rest of the collection.
The vet threshold, and the record that helps
Book a reptile vet if you find mites spreading despite cleaning, if ticks are attached near the eyes or in numbers, or if the internal pattern — weight loss, wrong droppings, fading condition — persists beyond a week or two of correct husbandry. Do not treat with products bought for other species or remedies measured by folklore; parasite treatment is matched to species and size by the vet, and the margin for error in a small animal is thin. Bring the fresh sample and your notes: what the animal eats, how its weight has moved, when the signs began. Filed in the reptile's KinsLe Pet Passport, faecal results, treatment dates and quarantine notes stay with the animal's record, so a recheck six months later starts from the last result rather than from a blank page.