Illness/Sickness: Salamander hasn't been eating the last few weeks, is it the weather?

Hi everyone, I rescued a long toed salamander larvae from my drying up pond back in july, it's now a grown adult but I've noticed it hasn't been eating much at all recently. The past 3 or 4 weeks it will usually move away from the food I offer it with tweezers. I've tried soft steamed meal worms, live red wiggler peices, and regular earthworm pieces from my back yard.

It used to happily eat earthworms and meal worms, but now it won't touch anything. A few weeks ago I noticed some white mites (wood mites I think they're called) in the dirt of his terrarium and replaced the soil, I also placed him in a larger terrarium. The stress of this may be his issue but I'm not sure. I live in Seattle and constantly have my window open, so the tank is pretty cool. Do you think it's just slowing down because of the weather or is it sick/stressed? Thanks for any help!

If your window is open and there's no back ground heating, maybe the subtle changes in temperature and daylight has begun to influence the little chap's natural behaviour and he's getting ready to do what long toed salamanders do in winter.
What are wood mites? are they parasitic or are the mircrovores? A complete soil change and a new tank is pretty dramatic plus having to put up with tweezers of different food offerings. If the little chap is healthy and well fed, give him a break. Four weeks of no feeding isn't a major concern if it's carrying condition and reduced activity.

That could be it. I'm not exactly sure what they're called - I've seen them called "wood mites" and "soil mites". Here is a picture of them: DSC01701.jpg Photo by jk_mm | Photobucket

They definitely aren't springtails, but they seemed to be mostly interested in any old food bits, leaves, and poo - but I did find a few on the salamander. They seemed to be making it itchy, because it was twitching it's back legs a bit.

They definitely came in this new soil I got, didn't realize that would be a problem :-/

Anyway, after I noticed them on my salamander I washed him off in dechlorinated water and put him in some new substrate that is pretty much sterile (I microwaved the same soil for 20 minutes and it seemed to do the job - I noticed 1 or 2 little bugs but nothing crazy).

Good news though, yesterday I saw him biting at an old worm piece - so I took that one out and put in a fresh meal worm, later that day I found he had eaten most of it! He seems to be a little more active now, maybe he just wasn't hungry!

Thanks for the help

Edit: To clarify, I microwaved new soil from the bag - not the exact same stuff. I'm not sure if that made a difference but microwaving it definitely got rid of the vast majority of them.