Fungus gnats or WINGED ROOT APHIDS???

[Ganja Goddess]

1)Do you have root aphids? Yes.

A)Do they look like any of the bugs pictured/linked in the first post? So far I have the Tank's, I'll try to get a closer look at the roots today. I have borrowed a microscope, maybe that will help identify them.

B)Do you have/have you had fliers (winged version)? No, a few fungus gnats have showed up (slow flying, erratic flights)

C)Have you noticed a waxy residue in the medium, on and around roots? Not that I have seen. plants are 4 weeks into flower. I can only see the roots on the first plant in the rails...

D)Have you tried any control methods/substances? What has and has not worked? Had been trying to fix the nute problems. Then saw the Tank beetles, found this thread See below for plan

2)Do you have nutrient lockout/deficiency symptoms? Yes

A)Do the symptoms seem to be connected to/tied to root aphid population? Yes

B)Do they look like magnesium or potassium deficiency? No, Nitrogen Dif

3)What is your grow setup like? This is in one flower room, 11 X 11 sealed room, ambient air temp is 68 degrees

4)What medium/method do you do? Aero/NFT

5)What nutrient line do you use? Botanicare, with some H&G products. ie Root exculerator & Magic green


6)Do you foliar-spray your plants? What do you spray with? pH of spray? Foliar in Veg with Magic Green


Trying to decide whether to scrap the room or not. I think I'm gonna try for 1 week. If the RA are not significantly dying and the plants are not showing signs of improvement by the end of the week. I will give up and break down the room. I dont want the problem to spread to other room.

Four weeks into flower, I will not use the IMID products. I have a bottle of Botaniguard on the way.

I ran H202 in the rez last night trying to clean up any bacteria, today I'm gonna refill an run hygrozyme for the roots. Running Botanicare with Liquid Karma makes it hard to tell root rot from LK staining at least while the roots are inside the rails. I hate to pull out the plants, the root mass is larger than the 2" holes.

Until the botaniguard gets here my plan is to pull out my 1/4 HP chiller, chill the rez as much as possible. Slow them down. I have some azamax I could run, but from what you guys are saying it wont do much.

Anyone have thoughts about running C02???

I have a Hydrogen, it looks like I can manage 17 CFM with it... At 17 CFM, I could raise the room C02 to 10k PPM in 34 minutes. From what I have read online, it appears that the 10k PPM has to stay in that range for 15 min to kill bugs.

Anyone know what that level PPM would do to the flowering plants in a 50 minute time frame? Kinda scary... BUT if it works saves my girls...

 

[spleebale]

Goddess: Thanks for joining us and filling out the questionnaire. I would not mess with CO2 - I had mentioned it in my original post but removed the mention since bali_man (I believe it was) said he tried super-heavy CO2 flood to kill RAs and with no success. We always appreciate another data point if you want to try it, but I figure it is more likely to hurt the ladies than to kill the aphids.

I think the chiller is a good idea. It is too bad you can't more directly inspect the roots.

Spectracide Triazicide has worked for many. It is non-systemic so it should probably not get pulled into the plants. I believe people have reported back after use with Spectracide in bloom to say their buds still tasted good, but I can't remember. There is also malthion - I am not sure how well that works.

You are also probably going to want to use something to repair root damage. I am not sure how good the Roots Excelurator (or however they spell it) works to repair roots - that may be your best bet even though they are in bloom, unless you can spring for some Voodoo Juice.

You should put up some sticky-traps in your other room to make sure they have not spread (which is more than likely). It is best to cut up the sticky-traps and place them near the base of plants so you can catch anything crawling around the stem. If you hang them up to catch fliers, it is best to put them right under a light so they are very bright (this catches their attention more than the smell).

I would inspect roots in the other room if possible as well.

Good luck!

 

[jimbo99]

update:
I bought the spectracide triazicide this morning and fed all plants plain tap water with 15ml/gal of the spectracide at a ph of 7.0. Watered all plants generously until plenty of runoff at around 9am. Check on the plants at 3:30 pm and could not find a single RA. Checked again at 10pm and no RA's to be found. The plants haven't been fed any nutes in well over a week and pots probably wont dry out for another 3-4 days, so i need to feed next watering. Some people here recommended to only use organic nutes because chem nutes might burn the already damaged roots. I only have ff grow big as a veg nute right now. What do you guys recommend i get to feed the plants next watering. I'm also going to try to mix in some kind of root stimulator. What do you guys recommend i get for next feeding? I'm growing in ffof with perlite. Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[GeorgeSmiley]

Here are what the roots on one of my plants looked like this morning..... I think this one might make it

it looks small but that's a 5 gallon..... going at a 10

I guess that's a little root bound Roots are white except after feeding it looks that color

smiley

 

[Leonard NeemOil]

Looking good smiley! That really doesn't look like a 5 gallon pot, it's like an optical illusion or something.

I was expecting to start the flush today but my plants just went through an odd growth spurt and started stacking fresh calyxs everywhere. so I'll hold off on the flush. This has been one strange grow.

 

[GeorgeSmiley]

Looking good Leonard!

The pot is called a giant pot or something. The top is 12x12 and it's probably 14 inches tall I think. 4.75 gallons. Looks like a 6 inch pot almost

Regarding growth spurt, I think continuing with these grows a lot of things are going to be a bit off, yield, finishing time, trich production...... could be everything but it's definitely interesting. I've already committed to try and finish these off instead of killing them, in tooo deep

I learned a lot about integrated pest management, cultural practices and more about pesticides than I ever imagined I would. i even took almost all my yard pesticides to the hazardous waste facility a week ago, we can drop it off free with old paint

I even learned how neglectful i can be with plants since i was busy the whole time just building the room. I never even over watered once this entire grow. That's a record

I hope this thread finds it's way to more people and much sooner so people don't lose really precious plant.

Smiley

 

[RetroGrow]

I had gotten rid of the root aphids on my mother plants and thought all was good.
After cleaning and sterilizing everything (I thought), I popped a couple packs of seeds and started another run. Now, you would think that after going through this, I would have been more alert.
But, plants started out fine, but after a few days, the Cindy 99s started to look a little off. I also have AK47 running, and they looked good, so I thought the Cindys must be really particular about their PH, as both strains were under same conditions, so I started trying to adjust PH, nutes, etc, etc.....but nothing really working. Plants would rally, but then wilt. They got spots and were showing deficiencies, but the AK47s were looking good, so I didn't suspect root aphids. Well after another week, now the AKs are also looking "funny", so tonight, I pulled all plants out of their pots, and after close examination, I finally saw the root aphids, only one or two per plant...not a major infestation like before, but apparently it doesn't take large numbers of these to do damage.
So, I just finished treating all my plants with Bayer Advanced, and everything should be dead by tomorrow. I'm still in veg, so hopefully, I can still finish this crop, but damn, I hate those fookers. I don't know how they got in all 21 plants after I thought I had everything under control. Hopefully, the plants will recover now. I will have to veg longer than usual to give them time.
The thing is, I am not using soil, so they didn't get here that way. I'm wondering if maybe they come in coco? Sounds crazy, but I just don't know where these fookers came from. Never even heard of them before, but they are certainly a bitch.
So, be alert, these bastids are all over the place. From now on, I think I will treat my plants from the get go as a preventative.
Thank God for Imid, and this thread.

 

[idoreallytry]

i was transplanting tonight and i pulled a plant out of the pot and about 100 lil creepy crawly bastards just started crawling up the side of the root ball it was disgusting,,,all over my casey jones joe schmoe cut,,,i have found where eggs had hatched on the bottom of leaves, there were hundreds of all differnt sizes crawling around on the bottoms of leaves,,,but i am still finding that once they get to landing on the plant they must lay some eggs and set and guard them or something lol,,,because once they are landing they just let me smash them,,,but they are harder than hell to kill flying around the pots and shit,,,sometimes u can smash them but they are crafty lil devils,,,so the bayer stuff is suppose to be the best?,,,will have to purchase me some,,,,peace

 

[jimbo99]

I was doing a google search on why i couldnt find any products containing imidacloprid locally and came across this article on imidacloprid. I found it informative.

http://ccesuffolk.org/assets/galleries/Agriculture/Imidacloprid-BMP-Greenhouses-and-Nurseries.pdf

 

[jimbo99]

just found out why i couldn't find it locally.
"** Imidacloprid: Products containing imidacloprid are not registered for use in certain New York City and Long Island counties (Kings, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk). Most formulations of imidacloprid once available to homeowners are now classified as restricted-use (for professional application only) in New York State. Check product status and label prior to purchase. "

 

[RetroGrow]

Go to Jersey....Home Depot and Lowes carry them.

 

[jimbo99]

i'll wait and see if they come back after the spectracide i just used. it seems to be doing the job so far. But for now i need suggestions on what to feed my plants next watering. they're still in veg in ffof and they havent been fed in a while. i read that i should only use organics cuz chem nutes might burn the damaged roots. Any suggestions on what organic nutes and root stimulating additive i should use?

 

[cornflake]

i was transplanting tonight and i pulled a plant out of the pot and about 100 lil creepy crawly bastards just started crawling up the side of the root ball it was disgusting.....

hey man I know how ya feel, I just grabbed a winged version of my pests to 420 scope and was watching what at first looked to me like the bug was shitting, like lots and lots!!!! then I realised I was watching it in it's death throes!!! it was spitting out eggs, they looked just like the eggs/wiggly things I was seeing come to the surface when I fed the plants.

yay!!! the spinosad I fed them 3 days ago is working!!! the bug was like alive but just laying there, it was proably in agony =(

oh well I'm sure it's dead now and all the pain is gone hehe

but it was creepy to watch

oh yeah and I definitely ID mine as FUNGUS GNATS, will keep an eye out for these other buggers though >> good luck people

 

[smokesalot420]

Any suggestions on what organic nutes and root stimulating additive i should use?

I use hygrozyme and Rhizotonic to try and help my rootzone out after an infestation (or transplanting).

 

[bicycle racer]

root aphids are the worst lost a bunch of plants to them. i did kill all with repeated full pyrethrum medium drenches but the plants were too far gone anyways.

 

[Ganja Goddess]

After reading RetroGrow's post this morning... I decided I had to do something NOW! My plants looked like they didn't take much water, and it seems like the yellowing has gotten worse.

I pulled the plants from the rails.
I'm sure there will be some repercussion from that. I didn't have a lot of loose root material.. I really expected much worse.

I made up two tubs of Azamax dunked the plants above the neoprene & net pot. Shook them out a few times rinsed with plain RO water. Then dunked in the clean Azamax. I let them sit for about 20 minutes or so. Hosed out the rails. Hooked up a fresh rez, with lite botanicare nutes (Pro Grow, Liquid Karma, Sweet, Cal Mag plus) Added Hygrozyme and H & G Root Excullerator.

Looking at the tub of Azamax. There are a lot of bodies in there. Which were probably the bugs that were on the net pots. I doubt that this will "Do it" but maybe it will hold em at bay until the botaniguard gets here or maybe I just killed my plants.

Tonight I'll hook up the chiller and drop the rez temp. I want to see how the plants react to what I did this morning. Before doing something else.

Azamax has not worked for media applications, we'll see if it helps in aero... Kinda doubt it, but it's what I had

**************************

EDIT: I pulled out my pocket microscope at 100X I identified the bugs with the red ass being called crabs! These were up on the rubbermaid tub where I had dipped the plants the first time. My guess is that they were up in the plant already when I dunked them... I"m gonna set off a pyrethum bomb after posting this.

 

[RetroGrow]

Goddess-Why not use Imid, which works for sure? These bastiges are nasty, and don't die off easily. The Imid keeps killing them as it is absorbed by the plant.

 

[J R]

You will also be SMOKING the Imid as it is systemic. Might kill any bugs in the lungs and heart area !

 

[GeorgeSmiley]

I don't recommend the imid to anyone. I think if I would have scraped my grow when i found them I would be sitting a lot better off right now even with younger plants. I would trade a lot of size to just have healthier plants.

In my research, looking at studies from universities, professional application data, EPA findings, history of IMID I come up with a lot of information from different sources showing it's safe and used on our food and you have no idea how much imid treated food you eat and if you're a smoker, well it's smothered in the shit. They did a study testing dried tobacco, burnt it, and tested for residue and found no significant amount present. The EPA studies/findings and submitting from Bayar, is that imid is not a carcinogen, not to children. No rat tumors, no dog tumors and is approved, with listed pre harvest intervals on most fruits, vegetables, fruit trees, nut trees tobacco and on and on and on

Though I think it's important to remember with IMID that it's banned in the EU, restricted to professionals in Canada, and in the US its in everything that'll hold it. not usually a good sign. Though most restrictions have nothing to do with health, just Bee's and aquatic life

I asked a couple people in PM about the info they're basing it on and got, (I feel it in my gut) ?

I guess my point is, if you have information showing it's bad..... then can it be posted up so we can see it? So others just coming the thread can find it?

Cheers
Smiley

 

[RetroGrow]

I don't believe the Imid is harmful. First of all, it is only .72% imid. Then, that is diluted to one ounce per gallon. So we are dealing with infinitesimal amounts, which do not endure in the plant for long periods. If it's safe to use on edibles, it's safe. As long as it's applied in veg, I don't see any problem at all.